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THEOSOPHY

PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGIOjl.

(Btffotb %ututt6

J)JiX,IVEBED

BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
IN 1892

F. MAX MULLER, K.M.

FOREIGN member of the french institute

HAWIK^WA 5VHSSION
NEw"l^ ad

acc. no 3 L. ■

- v • \ 5 '

Class No.;;.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

from the mastorwork of Thomas

ima Sacrae Theologiae, rather than i

'Souks of the Ead. But when we haves>earnt

BiniJOGIlA P11IC A L XUTK

PREFACE.

rjlHE discovery of God, the discovery of the Soul,
and the discovery of the oneness of God and the
Soul, such have been the three principal themes of
my Gifford Lectures, and I have ventured to malse
at least an attempt to treat each of them, not simply
as a philosopher, but as an historian. While the
philosophy of religion treats the belief in a First
Cause of the universe, and in an Ego or Self, and in the
true relation between the two, as matters of psycho-
logical development, or of logical consecution, it was
my purpose to show, not what the process of each of
these discoveries may or must have been, but what it
has been in the history of the world, so far as it is
known to us at present. I am fully aware that this
historical method is beset with grave difficulties, and
has in consequence found but little favour in the eyes
of speculative philosophers. So long as we look on
the history of the human race as something that
might or might not have been, we cannot wonder
that the student of religion should prefer to form his
opinions of the nature of religion and the laws of its
growth from the masterwork of Thomas Aquinas,
the Summa Sacme Theologiae , rather than from the
Hacred Books of the East But when we have learnt

PUEFACK.

to recognise in history the realisation of a nil Inna 1
purpose, when wo have .learnt to look upon it a;, in
the truest sense of the word a Dhlne Drama, tin*
plot revealed in it ought to assume in the eyes of tlm
philosopher also a meaning and a. value far beyond the
speculations of even the most enlightened and logical
theologians,

I am not ignorant of the dangers of such an under-
taking, and painfully conscious of the imperfeet ions
inevitable in a 'first attempt. 'Hie chief danger is
that we arc very prone to find in the facts of
history the lesson which we wish to find, it I>
well known how misleading the Hegelian method
has proved, because, differing in this re -pent from
Herder and from the historical school in general,
Hegel was hent on seeing in tie* history of
religion what o tttjhf to he there according to his
view of the logical necessity in the development of
the idea, if not of the psychological growth of the
human mind. The result has been that the historical
side in Hegel's Philosophy of Keligmn is alums!
entirely untrustworthy. My endeavour has been on
the contrary to yield to no presto upturns, but <o
submit to facts only, such as we find them in the
Sacred Books of the*. Hast. t<» try to decipher mid
understand them as we try to decipher and under*
stand the geological annals of tie* earth, find to
discover in them reason, cat ho and, elbct, ate!, if
possible, that done genealogical coherence which nhnm
can change empirical into scientific knowledge . Tins
ij* iuuhxjtmt method is no doubt the tuost perfect

PREFACE.

vii

when we can follow the growth of religious ideas, as
it were, from son to father, from pupil to teacher,
from the negative to the positive stage. But where
this is impossible, the analogical method also has its
advantages, enabling us to watch the same dogmas
springing up independently in various places, and to
discover from their similarities and dissimilarities
what is due to our common nature, and what must be
attributed to the influence of individual thinkers.
Quod semper, quod uhique , quod ah omnibus is not
necessarily what is true, but it is what is natural, it
constitutes -what we have accustomed ourselves to call
Natural Religion, though few historical students would
now maintain that Supernatural Religion has no right
to the name of Natural Religion, or that it forms no
part of the Divine Drama of Man as acted from age
to ago on the historical stage of the world.

It has been my object in these three consecutive
courses of Lectures on Physical, Anthropological, and
Psychological religion to prove that what in my first
volume I put forward as a preliminary definition of
religion in its widest sense, namely the Perception of
the Infinite, can be shown by historical evidence to
have been the one element shared in common by all
religions. Only we must not forget that, like every
other concept, that of the Infinite also had to pass
through many phases in its historical evolution, be-
ginning with the simple negation of what is finite,
and the assertion of an invisible Beyond, and leading
up to a perceptive belief in that most real Infinite in
which we live and move and have our being. This

EEEEACE.

viii

historical evolution of the concept of the objective
Infinite I tried to trace in my Lectures on Physical
Religion, that of the concept of the subjective Infinite
in my Lectures on Anthropological Religion, while
this last volume was reserved for the study of the
discovery of the oneness of the objective God and the
subjective Soul which forms the final consummation of
all religion and all philosophy.

The imperfections to which a first attempt in a
comparative study of religions is liable arise from the
enormous amount of the materials that have to be
consulted, and from the ever-increasing number of
books devoted to their interpretation. The amount
of reading that would be required in order to treat
this subject as it ought to be treated is more than any
single scholar can possibly force into the small span of
his life. It is easy to find fault and say, Qu,i trop
embmsse , mal 4treint , but in comparative studies it
is impossible to embrace too much, and critics must
learn to be reasonable and not expect from a scholar
engaged in a comparative study of many religions
the same thorough acquaintance with ©very one of
them which they have a right to expect from a
specialist. No one has felt more keenly than myself
the annoyance whenever I had to be satisfied with
a mere relata ref era, or had to accept the judgments
of others, even when I knew that they were better
qualified to judge than myself.

This applies more particularly to my concluding
Lectures, Lect, XII to XV in this volume. These Lec-
tures contain the key to the whole series, and they

PREFACE.

formed from the very beginning my final aim. They
are meant as the coping-stone of the arch that rests
on the two pillars of Physical and Anthropological
Religion, and unites the two into the true gate of the
temple of the religion of the future. They are to show
that from a purely historical point of view Christianity
is not a mere continuation or even reform of Judaism,
but that, particularly in its theology or theosophy it
represents a synthesis of Semitic and Aryan thought
which forms its real strength and its power of satis-
fying not only the requirements of the heart, but
likewise the postulates of reason.

My object was to show that there is a constant
action and reaction in the growth of religious ideas,
and that the first action by which the Divine was
separated from and placed almost beyond the reach
of the human mind, was followed by a reaction
which tried to reunite the two. This process,
though visible in many religions, more particularly
in that of the Vedanta, was most pronounced in
Judaism in its transition to Christianity. Nowhere
had the invisible God been further removed from
the visible world than in the ancient Jewish re-
ligion, and nowhere have the two been so closely
drawn together again and made one as by that
fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the divine
sonship of man. It has been my chief object to
show that this reaction was produced or at least
accelerated by the historical contact between Semitic
and Aryan thought, chiefly at Alexandria, and on this
point I have to confess that I have ventured to go far

PREFACE.

beyond Harnack, Drummond, Westcott, and others.
They seem to me to ascribe too little importance to
the influence of Greek philosophy in the formation of
the earliest Christian theology, while I feel convinced
that without that influence, the theology of Alexandria
■would have been simply impossible, or would probably
never have advanced beyond that of the Talmud. What
weighs with me more than anything else in forming
this opinion are the facts of language, the philoso-
phical terminology which both Jews like Philo and
Christians like St. Clement employ, and which is clearly
taken over from Greek philosophy. Whoever uses
such words as Logos , the Word, Monogenes , the Only-
begotten, Prototokos , the First-born, llyios ton theon ,
the Son of God, has borrowed the very germs of his
religious thoughts from Greek philosophy. To suppose
that the Fathers of the Church took these words
without borrowing the ideas, is like supposing that"
savages would carry away fire-arms -without getting
at the same time powder and shot for firing them.
Words may be borrowed and their ideas may be
modified, purified, magnified by the borrower, but the
substance is always the same, and the gold that is
in a gold coin will always remain the same gold,
even though it is turned into a divine image. I
have tried to show that the doctrine of the Logos, the
very life-blood of Christianity, is exclusively Aryan,
and that it is one of the simplest and truest conclu-
sions at which the human mind can arrive, if the
presence of Reason or reasons in the world has once
been recognised.

PREFACE.

We all know the words of Lucretius :

1 Praeterea caeli rationes ordine certo

Et varia annorum cernebant tempora verti.* (v. 1182.)

If the human reason has once recognised Reason or
reasons (logoi) in the universe, Lucretius may call it
a fatal error to ascribe them to the gods, but are they
to be ascribed to no one ? Is the Reason or the Logos
in the world nothing but a name, a mere generalisa-
tion or abstraction, or is it a real power, and, if so,
whose power is it ? If the Klamaths, a tribe of Red
Indians, declared that the world was thought and
willed by the Old One on high, the Greeks went only
one step further by maintaining that this thought of
the Supreme Being, this Logos, as they called it, was
the issue, the offspring, the Son of God, and that it
consisted of the logoi or ideas or, as we now say,
the types of all created things. The highest of these
types being the type of manhood, the Alexandrian
Fathers of the Church in calling Christ the Logos
or the Word or the Son of God, were bestowing
the highest predicate which they possessed in their
vocabulary on Christ, in whom they believed that the
divine thought of manhood had been realised in all
its fulness. That predicate, however, was not of their
own workmanship, nor was it a mere modification of
the Semitic Wisdom, which in the beginning was with
God. That Wisdom, a feminine, may be recognised
in the EpisUmS or knowledge with which the Father
begets the Son, but it cannot be taken at the same
time as the prototype of the masculine Logos or the
spoken Word or the Son of God.

PBEEACE.

xii

This philosophical concept of the Son of God can-
not he derived from the Old Testament concept of
Israel as the son of God, nor from the occasional
expressions of personal piety addressed to Yahweh as
the Father of all the sons of man. 4 Son of God,’ as
applied to Jesus, loses its true meaning unless we take
it in its idiomatic Greek sense, as the Logos 1 2 , and unless
we learn to understand what the Fathers of the Church
had fully understood, that the Logos or the Word of
God could become manifest to mankind in one form
only, namely, in that of man, the ideal or perfect man.
I am quite willing to admit, on the other hand, that
an expression such as ‘Son of Man’ is of Semitic
growth. It is a solecism even when translated into
Greek. No Greek would ever have said son of man
in the sense of man, as little as any Roman would
ever have spoken of Agnus Bei y except under the
influence of Jewish thought. Son of man meant
simply man, before it was applied to the Messiah.
Thus only can we understand the antithesis which
meets us as early as the first century , 4 the Son of God,
not the son of man V

If we have once entered into the thoughts of Philo
and St. Clement as the representatives of Jewish and
Christian theology at Alexandria, we shall perceive
how closely the doctrine of the Incarnation is con-
nected with that of the Logos, and receives its true
historical explanation from it and from it alone.

1 In passages such as Matt, viii 29, Mark xiv. 61, xvi. 89, ‘Son of
God * is used in its popular sense, which to the Jews was blasphemous.

2 Barnabas, xii, 10, oi>xt avOpajTrov, vldt ro9 ®eov.

PREFACE. xiii

It was only on the strength of their old belief
in the Logos that the earliest Greek converts could
with perfect honesty, and, in spite nf the sneers of
Celsus and other Greek philosophers, bring them-
selves to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate
Logos, as the Word or the Son of God. If they had
taken any lower view of Christ, if they had been
satisfied with a mythological Son of God, or with a
Nazarene Christ, and if they had held, as some theo-
logians held afterwards, nay as some hold even now,
that there was between Christ and His brethren what
they call a difference of kind, not of degree, however
wide, they could not have answered the taunts of
their former fellow-students, they could not have
joined the Catechetical School at Alexandria or
followed such teachers as Athenagoras, Pantaenus,
St. Clement, and Origen.

What Athenagoras, one of the earliest apologetes of
Christianity, thought about the Son of God, we can
learn from his defence which was addressed to
Marcus Aurelius, where he says (cap. x): 6 Let no
one think it ridiculous that God should have a son.
For though the poets in their fictions represent the
gods as no better than men (that is, as begetting sons),
our mode of thinking is not the same as theirs, concern-
ing either God the Father or the Son. But the Son of
God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in opera- .
tion ; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were
all things made, the Father and the Son being one.’

All this refers to Christian theology or theosophy
only, and not to what we mean by Christian religion.

XIV

PKEFACE.

This drew its life from another source, from the
historical personality of Jesus, and not from the
Alexandrian Logos. This distinction is very im-
portant for the early history of Christianity, and we
must never forget that the Greek philosophers who
joined the Christian community, after they had once
made their peace with their philosophical conscience,
became true disciples of Christ and accepted with all
their heart the moral law which He had preached,
the law of love on which hang all His command-
ments. What that personality was they must have
known far better than we can, for Clement, having
been bom in the middle of the second century, may
possibly have known Papias or some of his friends,
who knew the Apostles, and he certainly knew many
Christian writings which are lost to us 1 . To restore
the image of that personality must be left to each be-
liever in Christ, according to the ideals of which his
mind is capable, and according to his capacity of com-
prehending the deep significance of the few words of
Christ that have been preserved to us by the Apostles
and their disciples. What interests the historian is to
understand how the belief of a small brotherhood of
Galilean fishermen and their devotion to their Master
could have influenced, as they did, the religious beliefs
and the philosophical convictions of the whole of the
ancient world. The key to that riddle should be
sought for, I believe, at Alexandria rather than at
Jerusalem. But if that riddle is ever to be solved, it
is the duty of the historian to examine the facts and

1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 46.

XY1

PREFACE*

they went on, each on their own way. It was a real
epoch in the history of Christianity, for Philo’s works
were studied by St. Clement and the other Fathers
of the Alexandrian Church, and opened their eyes to
see the truth in the inspired writings of Moses and
the Prophets, and likewise in the inspired writings of
Plato and Aristotle. It was a real epoch in the history
of the world, if we are right in supposing that we owe
to the philosophical defenders of the Christian faith at
Alexandria the final victory of Christian philosophy
and Christian religion over the religion and philosophy
of the whole Roman Empire.

I ought, perhaps, to explain why, to the title of
Psychological Religion , originally chosen for this
rny final course of Gifford Lectures, I have added
that of Theosophy. It seemed to me that this venera-
ble name, so well known among early Christian
thinkers, as expressing the highest conception of God
within the reach of the human mind, has of late been so
greatly misappropriated that it was high time to restore
it to its proper function. It should be known once for
all that one may call oneself a theosophist, without
being suspected of believing in spirit-rappings, table-
turnings, or any other occult sciences and black arts.

I am painfully aware that at seventy my eyes are
not so keen as they were at seventeen, and I must
not conclude this preface without craving the in-
dulgence of my readers for any misprints or wrong
references that may have escaped me.

Oxford, February , 1893.

F. M. M.

PREFACE,

the facts only, without any bias whether of orthodoxy,
of rationalism, or of agnosticism. To the historian
orthodoxy has no existence. He lias to deal with facts
only, and with deductions that can be justified by facts.

I cannot give hero the names of all the books
which have been of use to me in preparing these
Lectures. Many of them are quoted in the notes.
My earliest acquaintance with the subject treated in
this volume goes back to the lectures of Weisse, Lotze,
and Niedner at Leipzig, and of Schelling and Neander
at Berlin, which I attended more than fifty years ago.
Since then the additions to our knowledge of ancient
religions, and of Christianity in its most ancient
form, have been so enormous that even a biblio-
graphical index would form a, volume. I cannot,
however, conclude this preface without acknowledging
my obligations to the authors of some of the more
recent works which have been of the greatest use to
me. I feel deeply grateful to Professor Harnack,
whose .Dogmen-fjexchidrte, 1888 , is the most marvellous
storehouse of well -authenticated facts in the history
of the Christian Church, to Dr. Charles Bigg, whose
learned Bwrapton Ledum on the Chridian Platonkts,
1888 , make us regret that they were never continued,
and to Dr, James Drummond, whose work on Philo
Judaeus^ 1888 , has supplied me not only with most
valuable evidence, but likewise with the most careful
analysis of whatever evidence there exists in illus-
tration of the epoch of Philo Judaeus. That epoch
was an epoch in the true sense of the word, for it
made both Greeks and Jews pause for a time before

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface *

FAOE

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

The Historical Study of Religion.

Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. — The Fundamental
Principle of the Historical School. — History of Religion is the True
Philosophy of Eeligion. — Natural Eeligion the Foundation of our
Belief in God. — The Eeal Purpose of the Biography of Agni. —
Natural Revelation. — The True Object of comparing the Christian
and other Religions. — Ancient Prayers. — Egyptian, Accadian,
Babylonian, Vedic, Avestic, Gathas, Chinese, Mohammedan,
Modern Hindu Prayers. — Moses and the Shepherd. — Advantages
of a Comparative Study of Religions 1-26

LECTURE II.

The True Yalue of the Sacred Books Examined,

Historical Documents for Studying the Origin of Religion. —
Religious Language. — Literary Documents. — Modem Date of
Sacred Books. — Fragmentary Character of the Sacred Books of

W b

XVlii TABLE OF CONTENTS .

PAOE

India. — Loss of the Sacred Literature .of Persia.— -The Relation
between the Avesta and the Old Testament. — * I am that I am * 27-57

LECTURE III.

The Historical Relationship of Ancient Religions
and Philosophies.

How to compare Ancient Religions and Ancient Philosophies. —
Common Humanity. — Common Language. — Common History. —
Common Neighbourhood. — Relation between the Religions of
India and Persia, — Independent Character of Indian Philosophy. —

The Indian View of Life. — Language, the Common Background of
Philosophy. — Common Aryan Religion and Mythology. — Charites
rrsHaritas. — The later Growth of Philosophy. — Help derived by
Philosophy from Language. — Independent Character of Indian
Philosophy. — Was Greek Philosophy borrowed from the East ? —
Indian Philosophy autochthonous 53-86

LECTURE IV.

The Relation of Psychological to Physical and
Anthropological Religion,

The Constituent Elements of Religion, — My own Division,—

The meaning of Psychological Religion. — I. Return of the Soul to
God, after death. — II. Knowledge of the unity of the Divine and
the Human. — Veda and Vedanta. — Upanishads, — Vedanta*S(Rras.

— Commentary by &ahkara£arya. — -Commentary by R&mlinu^a, —
Three Periods of Vedanta Literature.— .Peculiar Character of
Indian Philosophy. — Philosophy begins with doubting the Evi-
dence of the Senses. — Sruti or Inspiration,— -Tat tv am a si.* —

Two Vedanta Schools. — The Upani shads difficult to translate 87-1 12

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

XIX

LECTUKE Y.

JOUENEY OF THE SOUL AFTEE DEATH.

PAGE

Different Statements from the Upanishads. — Passages from the
Upanishads. — Difficulties of Interpretation. — Historical Progress
in the Upanishads. — Attempts to harmonise the different State-
ments of the Upanishads. — Veddmta-Sfttras. — Independent State-
ments in the Mantras. — Mythological Language misunderstood. —

The Devayana or Path of the Gods. — Metempsychosis. — Reality
of Invisible Things. — Absence of Hells. — Transmigration as con-
ceived in the Laws of Manu. — The Three Qualities, Darkness,
Activity, and Goodness. — The Nine Classes. — Punishments of
the Wicked. — Bridges 113-176

LECTUEE VI.

The Eschatology of the Ayesta.

General similarities in Eschatological Legends. — Peculiar re-
lation between the Religions of India and Persia. — Zoroaster
teaches neither Eire-worship nor Dualism. — The Problem of the
Origin of Evil. — The Angels, originally qualities of Ormazd. —
Asuras and Suras. — Abjuration of Daeva Worship. — Immortality
of the Soul in the Avesta. — The Pitm or Fathers as conceived in
the Vedic Hymns. — Fate of the individual Soul at the general
resurrection. — Rewards and Punishments after Death. — Good
Works in the shape of a Beautiful Maiden. — Influence on Moham-
medanism. — Extract from the Minokhired on the Weighing of
the Dead. — Arrival of the Soul before the throne of Bahman and
Ahuramazda. — Common background of Avesta and Veda. — Pitaras,
the Fathers in the Veda, the Fravashis in the Avesta. — Wider
meaning of Fravashi 177-207

b a

TABLE OP CONTENTS.

LECTURE VTT.

Eschatology op Plato,

PACK

Plato’s Authority. — Plato's Mythological Language, — The Tale
of the Soul. — The Charioteer and the Hor.srs. — 1 The Procession of
the Gods. — Belief in metempsychosis in Pluto and the Upanishads. —

The Nine Classes of Plato and Mann. — Human Souls migrating
into Animal Bodies. — The Story of Er. — Coincidences and Dif-
ferences. — Truth underlying Myth. — The Raidas on the Immor-
tality of the Soul. — The Polynesians on the Immortality of the
Soul. — The last result of Physical Religion . * . 208 -232

LECTURE VITL

Trite Immortality.

Judaism and Buddhism. — The Vedanta Doctrine on True
Immortality, — Personality, a Limitation of tlu* Godhead. —
Struggle for higher conception of the Godhead, — Name for the
highest Godhead, Brahman, Purusha, Prana, Spirit, — Other
Names of the Supreme Being, Skamhha. — Names for the Soul,—
Aham, Ego. — Atman. — Dialogue from the AVmndogya-UpanLhad.

— Deductions from the Dialogue. — Nahkara’s Remarks. — The True
Nature of the Individual Soul, — The Phenomenal and the Heal. —

The Atman unchanged amidst the changes of the World, —
Nescience or Avidyu the Cause of Phenomenal Semblance.—
Satyahhedavilda and Bhedilbhedavada. — The Approach of the
Soul to Brahman. — Later Speculations, — Identity of the Soul
with Brahman 233-281

LECTURE IX.

The Vedanta-Philosophy,

The Ved&nta as a Philosophical System, — Identity of Soul and
Brahmnn. — Dialogue from the iTMndogya-Upanishad,— Union, not
Absorption, — Knowledge, not Love of God. — Avidyu, or Nescience.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

XXI

PAGE

— Brahman as sat, as Jci t, and as &nanda. — Philosophy and
Religion. —The Supreme Lord or Isvara. — Upadhis, Sftkshmasarira,
and Sthftlasarira. — Creation or Emanation. — Brahman and Avidya
the Cause of the Phenomenal World. — The Essence of Man. — .
Karman or Apftrva. — Different States of the Soul. — Kramamukti.
Givanmukti. — Personality of the Soul .... 282-311

LECTURE X.

The Two Schools of the Vedanta.

Equivocal Passages in the Upanishads. — Sankara and Ramanuya.

— Ramanuya. — Sankara. — Moral Character of the Vedanta. —
Ascetic Practices. — Esoteric Doctrines. — Difference between India
and Greece 312-335

LECTURE XI.

StJFIISM.

Religion, System of Relations between Man and God. — Sufiism,
its Origin. — Abstract of Sufi Doctrines. — Rabia, the earliest Sufi. —
Connection of Sufiism with Early Christianity. — Abu Said Abul
Cheir, Eounder of Sufiism. — Abu Yasid and Junaid. — Sufi, Fakir,
Darwish. — Asceticism.— The Mesnevi. — Mohammed’s Opinion. —

The Four Stages. — The Poetical Language of Sufiism. — Morality
of Sufiism. — Extracts from Sufi Poets .... 336-3G0

LECTURE XII.

The Logos.

Religion a Bridge between the Visible and the Invisible. —
Oriental Influences in Early Christianity. — Borrowing of Religious
Thoughts. — Philo and his Allegorical Interpretation. — Synesius.

XXII

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PACOS

— Logos.— The Logos among the Klamaths. — The Historical
Antecedents of the Logos. — The Origin of species.— Heraclitus.—*
Anaxagoras. — Socrates and Plato. — Aristotle. — The Stoics. —
Philo’s Inheritance. — Philo’s Philosophy. — The Logos a Bridge
Between God and the World. — Logos as the Son of God. —
Wisdom or Sophia. — Monogenes, the Only Begotten. — Jupiter
as Sun of God 301-423

LECTURE XIII.

Alexandrian Christianity.

Stoics and NTeo Platonists. — Plotinus. — Letter from Plotinus
to Flaccus. — Ecstatic Intuition. — Alexandrian Christianity. St.
Clement.— The Trinity of St. Clement. — Origen. — The Alogoi 424-458

LECTURE XIV.

Dionysius the Areopagitk.

The Logos in the Latin Church.— Tertullian. — Dionysius the
Areopagite. — Writings of Dionysius. — Translation hy Seotus
Krigena, — The Influence of the Dionysian Writing*. — Sources of
Dionysius.— The Daimones. — Influence of Dionysius during the
Middle Ages. — The System of Dionysius, — Milman on Dionysius. —
ileal Attraction of Dionysius — The Fifth Century.— Five Stages
of Mystic Union.— Mysteries. — Mystic and Scholastic Theology.—
Mysticism, and Christian Mysticism. — Objections to Mystic
Ihiigion reconsidered. — St. Bernard. — Love of God. — Kcst&sfe,
according to St. Bernard. — St. Bernard’s Position in the Church
and State. — Hugo of St. Victor, Knowledge nnm certain than
Faith.— Thomas Aquinas 459 408

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

XX111

LECTUEE XY.

Christian Theosophy.

PACOS

Mystic Christianity. — The German Mystics. — The Fourteenth
Century in Germany. — The Interdict. — The People and the
Priesthood. — Dominicans and Franciscans. — Eekhart and Tauler. —
Eekhart’s Mysticism. — Eckhart’s Definition of the Deity. — Creation
is Emanation. — The Human Soul. — The Messiah and the Logos. —

The Approach to God. — -Birth of the Son. — Passages from the
Fourth Gospel.— Objections to Mystic Beligion. — Excessive As-
ceticism. — Sinlessness. — Want of Beverence for God. — Beligion,
the Bridge between the Finite and the Infinite „ . 499-544

Index

. 545

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

Bie WeltffescMclite ist das Welt g'eric lit .

^)te ®eltgefd)idjte ift ba$ 2Bettgericf)t — this is one of
those pregnant sayings of Schiller's which have
a far wider application than we at first suspect. It
is difficult to translate these words literally, without
depriving them of their idiomatic force. Literally
translated they mean, ‘ the history of the world is the
judgment of the world." But in German, the judg-
ment of the world means at the same time c the day
of judgment, 5 or ‘doom’s day."

What Schiller meant therefore was that every day
is ' a day of doom, that the history of the world, if
comprehended as a whole, is the true judgment of
the world, and that we must learn to understand that
judgment, and to accept it as right. If we adopt
this view of Schiller’s, and learn to look upon the
history of the world as an unbroken vindication of
the highest wisdom, and of the most perfect justice
which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary,
govern the world, it would follow that what applies
to the history of the world in general, must likewise
apply to all that constitutes that history. Schiller s
(4) B

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

dictum -would in fact express in general terms what I
have tried to explain to you in my former lectures as
the fundamental principle of the Historical School.

Tke Fundamental Principle of the Historical School.

The followers of that school hold with Schiller that
the history of religion, for instance, is the truest
vindication of religion, the history of philosophy the
best judgment of philosophy, the history of art the
highest and final test of art. If in this spirit we study
the history of the world, or any part of it, we shall
learn that many things may seem wrong for the time
being, and may, nay must be right for the time to
come, for all time or for eternity. Many things which
seem imperfect, are seen to be most perfect, if only
understood as a preparation for higher objects. If
we have once brought ourselves to see that there is an
unbroken continuity, a constant ascent, or an eternal
purpose, not only a mechanical development, in the
history of the world, we shall cease to find fault with
what is as yet an imperfect germ only, and not yet
the perfect flower or the final fruit; we shall not
despise the childhood of the world, nor the childhood
of the religions of the world, though we cannot
discover therein that mature and perfect manhood
which we admire in later periods of history. We
shall learn to understand the imperfect or less perfect
as a necessary preparation for the more perfect. No
doubt such a view of the history of the world requires
faith; we have often to believe, even though we
cannot prove, simply from a firm conviction that it
cannot be otherwise, that there must be law and
order and purpose in the world, and that there must

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

be goodness and justice in the Godhead. That faith
was expressed hr Friedrich Logau in the well-known
verse, as translated by Longfellow, c Though the mills
of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.’
And the same faith found utterance long ago in
Euripides also, when he said : £ ’Tis true the working
of the gods is slow, but it is sure and strong 1 /

Anyhow, those philosophers who have become
reconciled to the idea of the survival of the fittest,
can hardly object to the principle that what is, is fit,
and will in the end prove right, or, to put it into
Schiller’s words, that the s Weltgeschichte i$t das
Weltgericht /

History of Religion is the True Philosophy of Religion.

You will understand now why I felt so strongly
that the most satisfactory way of carrying out the
intentions of the founder of this lectureship, the only
effective way of studying what is called the philo-
sophy of religion, or the philosophical criticism of
religion, is to study the history of religion. History
sifts and tests all forms and varieties of religion far
more effectively than any single philosopher could
possibly hope to do. I do not mean to say that a
purely theoretic, as distinguished from an historical
treatment of religion, is utterly useless. Far from
it. I know that Kant scouts the idea that the history
of philosophy is itself philosophy. But is not Kant’s
own philosophy by this time part and parcel of the
history of philosophy ? It is quite true that we can
study a science apart from its history. We can,
for instance, study the science of Political Economy

1 Bacchae, 882 , *0 p/xarat jaqXls, a\\' ojicos marbv t6 76 Baov aQkvos.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

apart from all history. We can learn what ought to
he and what ought not to be, according to the general
principles of that science. All I maintain is that it
is better to test the truth of these general principles
by history, and not by theory only. Certain theories
of Political Economy which seemed quite perfect in
the abstract, have been tried and found wanting.
We hear it said even now that the principles of free
trade and protection are on their trial. What does
that mean, except that they are being tried by the
judgment of history, by results, by facts, by statistics
against which there is no appeal, unless we say with
some philosophers c tant pis pour les fails / or c tant pis
pour Vhistoire /

A strategist in his study may know all the rules of
the science of war, but the great general must know
how these rules have stood the test of history; he
must study the actual battles that have been fought,
and thus learn to account for the victories and the
defeats of the greatest commanders. In the same
way then, as the true science of war is the history of
war, the true science of religion is, I believe, the
history of religion.

natural Beligion tke Foundation of our Belief in God.

To show that, given the human mind such as it is,
and its environment such as it is, the concept of God
and a belief in God would be inevitable, is something,
no doubt. Still you know how all the proofs bf the
existence of God that have been framed by the most
eminent philosophers and theologians have been con-
troverted by equally eminent philosophers and theolo-
gians. You know that there survive even now some

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

half-petrified philosophers and theologians who call it
heresy to believe that unassisted human reason could
ever attain to a concept of or a belief in God, who
maintain that a special revelation is absolutely neces-
sary for that purpose, but that such a revelation was
granted to the human race twice only, once in the
Old, and once in the New Testament. They point
triumphantly to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
which has demolished once for all, they say, such poor
human cobwebs as the cosmological, the teleological,
and the ontological proofs of the existence of a Divine
Being, and has thus proved, from a quite unexpected
quarter, that unassisted human reason cannot possibly
attain to a sure knowledge even of the mere existence
of God.

It may be said that such views are mere survivals,
and not exactly survivals of the fittest. Those who
maintain them, certainly know not what they do.
But such views, though really subversive of all true
religion, are very often preached as essential to Chris-
tianity, and many who know not the history of religion,
are deceived by their reiterated assertion.

You know that in a court of law a clever pleader
can defend almost anything ; and in the court of
philosophy also, I believe that pleaders can always
be found to argue most eloquently whether for the
plaintiff or for the defendant. The only evidence,
however, which safely tells in the end, consists in
facts.

The Real Purpose of the Biography of Agui.

That being the case, I devoted the principal part of
my second course of lectures to placing before you
facts, — facts which cannot be controverted, or which,

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

at all events, have not been controverted, and which
show how the human mind, unassisted by what is
called special revelation, found its way stop by step
from the lowest perception of something material and
visible to the highest concept of a supreme and
invisible God. I chose for that purpose what I
called the Biography of Agni or fire, that is the
succession of the various ideas called forth in the
human mind by the various aspects of fire, which be-
ginning with the simplest perception of the fire on the
hearth, as giving warmth and light and life to young
and old, culminated in the concept of Agni as the god
of light, the creator and ruler of the whole world.

This was an arduous task, and it may have proved
as tedious to my hearers as it proved laborious to
myself. Still, there was no other way of silencing
all gainsayers once for all. If any so-called Christian
Divine doubts the fact that in times past ‘ God did not
leave himself without witness, in that he did good, and
gave us rain from heaven, and fire also, that is light
and warmth, from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling
our hearts with food and gladness ’ (Acts xiv. 17),
what I call the biography of Agni will in future supply
evidence that ought to convince both those who believe
and those who disbelieve the words of St. Paul and
Barnabas, and that anyhow cannot ' be gainsayed. I
can quite understand the anger that has been roused
by the production of this evidence, though I cannot
admire the efforts that have been made to discredit it.
It is quite possible that in putting together this
xography of Agni, I may have left out some passages
from the Yeda which would have been helpful for my
purpose. Let them be produced, and I shall be most

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

grateful. It is quite possible also that here and there
I may have misapprehended the exact meaning of a
verse taken from the Veda. Again, let it be proved,
and I shall be most grateful. I am the last man to
claim infallibility, not even in the interpretation of
the Veda. But if people wish to controvert any
statements of mine of which they disapprove, they
ought to know that there are two ways only of doing
it. They must show either that my facts are wrong,
or that my deductions from these facts are faulty. In
either case, no one will feel more grateful to them
than I myself. For, if they can show that my facts
were wrong, they will of course supply us at the same
time with the true facts, and if my conclusions were
faulty, that can be settled once for all by the rules of
logic. If critics would confine themselves to these
two tasks, they would be conferring a benefit on us
for which every true scholar would be truly grateful.
But if they deal, as so many do, in mere rhetoric or
invective, they must not be offended if no notice
is taken of their rage and vain imaginings. These
matters are far too serious, nay, to my mind, far too
sacred for mere wrangling. Though some excellent
divines may differ from me, they ought to know that
the cause of truth is never served by mere assertions,
still less by insinuations, and that such insinuations
are far more dishonouring to those who utter them
than they could possibly be to those against whom
they are uttered.

natural Bevelation.

I maintain, therefore, until any of my statements have
been refuted by facts, that we can see in the history of
Vedic Religion, how the human mind was led by a

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

natural revelation, far more convincing than any so-
called special revelation, from the perception of the
great phenomena of nature to the conception of agents
behind these phenomena. The case of Agni or fire was
chosen by me as a typical case, as but one out of
many, all showing how the phenomena of nature forced
the human mind with a power irresistible to human
reason, to the conception of and a belief in agents
behind nature, and in the end to a belief in one Agent
behind or above all these agents ; to a belief in One
God of Nature, a belief in a cosmic or objective
Deity. Here was my answer to the statement repeated
again and again, that the human mind, unassisted by
a special revelation, was incapable of conceiving a
Supreme Being. My answer was not an argument,
nor a mere assertion. My answer consisted in his-
torical facts, in chapter and verse quoted from the
Yeda; and these facts are stubborn things, not to be
annihilated by mere clamour and chiding.

The True Object of comparing* the Christian and other
Religions.

I must confess, however, that I did not expect that
the attacks on what I called the historical proof of the
existence of a Supreme Being would have come from
the quarters from which they came. I thought that
those who profess and call themselves Christians
would have welcomed the facts which confirm the
teaching of St. Paul. I hoped they would have seen
that the facts which I collected from the ancient
religions of the world formed in reality the only safe
foundation of Natural Beligion, and indirectly the
strongest confirmation of the truth of the Christian

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

religion. That religion, I say once more, should
challenge rather than deprecate comparison. If we
find certain doctrines which we thought the exclusive
property of Christianity in other religions also, does
Christianity lose thereby, or is the truth of these
doctrines impaired by being recognised by other
teachers also? You know that it has often been said
that almost every Christian doctrine could be traced
back to the Talmud. I am no judge on that subject ; but
if it were so, what should we lose ? All I can say is that
I have never met in the extracts from the Talmud with
the most characteristic, nay, the fundamental doctrine
of Christianity, the recognition of the divine element
in man, or the divine sonship of man. Many things
which Christianity shares in common with the Talmud,
it shares in common,- as we know now, with other
religions likewise. It is true that Hillel, when asked
to describe the religion of the Jews in a few words,
replied, c What thou wouldst not have done to thee, do
not that to others. This is the whole law ; all the
rest is but interpretation. Go, then, and learn what it
means V But it is well known by this time that the
same doctrine occurs in almost every religion. Con-
fucius said : { What I do not wish men to do to me, I
also wish not to do to men.’ We read in the MaMbh&~
rata : ‘Hear the sum total of duties, and having heard,
bear it in mind — Thou shalt not do to others what is
disagreeable to thyself’ (Pandit, 1871, p. 238). Why
then should Christians wish to claim an exclusive
property in this truth ?

The Talmud, we must remember, sprang from the
same historical soil as Christianity, its authors breathed
1 Talmud babli, Sabbath, fol. 31 a. Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 211.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

the same air as the disciples of Christ. Coincidences
between the two are therefore most natural, and it
does by no means follow that the Talmud can always
claim a priority in time. But whoever may claim
priority, whoever may have lent or borrowed, I confess
I rejoice whenever I meet with passages from the
Talmud or any other Sacred Book, that remind me of the
Old or the New Testament. We read, for instance, in the
Talmud : 4 Be not as slaves that minister to the Lord
with a view to receive recompense ; but be as slaves
that minister to the Lord without a view to receive
recompense ; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you ’
(Antigonus of Sochow, in Pirkd Ab&th I. 3 ; Kuenen,
1 c. p. 212). And again, £ Do His will as if it were thy
will, that He may do thy will as if it were His will 1
(Gamaliel, l.c. II. 4).

These are Christian sentiments-; they may or may not
have been borrowed from the Taimud. They are rays
from a sun that lighteth the whole world. Marcus
Aurelius said : £ Love mankind, follow God’ (vii. 31) ;
Epictetus said : ‘Dare to look up to God and say: Do
with me henceforth as Thou wilt. I am of one mind
with Thee. I am Thine. I decline nothing that seems
good to Thee. Lead me whither Thou wilt. Clothe me
as Thou wilt. Wilt thou that I take office or live a
private life, remain at home or go into exile, be poor
or rich, I will defend Thy purpose with me in respect
of all these 5 (Discourses, II. 16). These are truly
Christian sentiments, Christian, because eternal and
universal ; but it would be very difficult to prove that
they were borrowed either from or by Christianity. And
why should every truth be borrowed from Christianity?
Why should not Christianity also have borrowed?

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

And why should not certain truths be world-wide
and universal ? To me these truths seem to gain rather
than to lose in power, if we accept them as springing
up spontaneously in different minds, than if we main-
tain that they were conceived once only, and then
borrowed by others.

The reason why people will not see the identity
of a truth as enuntiated in different religions, is
generally the strangeness of the garb in which it is
clothed. No doubt the old heathen names of the
Gods, even of their Supreme God, are often offensive
to us by what they imply. But is it not all the more
interesting to see how, for instance, Aristides the
Sophist (176 A.D.), though retaining the name of
Jupiter, is striving with all his might for a higher
conception of the Deity, purer even than what we
find in many portions of the Old Testament. This is
how Aristides speaks of Jupiter :

£ Jupiter made all things; all things whatever are
the works of Jupiter — rivers, and the earth, and the
sea, and the heaven, and whatever is between or above,
or beneath them, and gods and men, and all living
things, and all things visible and intelligible. First
of all, he made himself ; nor was he ever brought up in
the caverns of Crete ; nor did Saturn ever intend to
devour him ; nor did he swallow a stone in his stead ;
nor was J upiter ever in any danger, nor will he ever
be. . . . But he is the First, and the most ancient, and
the Prince of all things, and Himself from Himself/

Why should we be less able and willing to see
through the mists of mythology than those who were
brought up with a belief in their own mythological
gods ? Why should we decline to recognise the higher

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

purpose that was in these divine names from the
beginning, and which the best among the pagans never
failed to recognise ?

Ancient Prayers.

It has often been said that what we mean by
prayer does not or even cannot exist in any of the
pagan religions. It may be true that the loving re-
lation between man and God is absent in the prayers
of the heathen world. It is certainly true that there are
some religions unfavourable to prayer, particularly if
prayer is taken in the sense of praying for worldly
blessings. The Buddhists in general know of no
prayer addressed to a superintendent deity, because
they deny the existence of such a deity; but even
prayers addressed to the Buddhas or Buddhist Saints
are never allowed to assume the character of petitions.
They are praises and meditations rather than solicita-
tions. Prayers in the sense of petitions are considered
actually sinful by the Sin-shiu sect of Buddhists in
Japan. It is different with the followers of Confucius.
They believe in a God to whom prayers might be
addressed. But Professor Legge tells us that we look
in vain for real prayers in their ancient literature, and
this is most likely due to that sense of awe and
reverence which Confucius himself expressed when he
said that we should respect spiritual beings, but keep
aloof from them l .

It is true also that when man has once arrived at
a philosophical conception of the Deity, his prayers
assume a form very different from the prayers ad-
dressed by a child to his Father in heaven. Still even
such prayers are full of interest. Almost the last
1 Confucian Analects, VI. 20.

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

word which Greek philosophy has said to the world,
is a prayer which we find at the end of the commen-
tary of Simplicius on Epictetus, a prayer full of honest
purpose :

£ I beseech Thee, 0 Lord, the Father, Guide of our
reason, to make us mindful of the noble origin Thou
hast thought worthy to confer upon us ; and to assist
us to act as becomes free agents ; that we may be
cleansed from the irrational passions of the body and
may subdue and govern the same, using them as in-
struments in a fitting manner ; and to assist us to the
right direction of the reason that is in us, and to its
participation in what is real by the light of truth.
And thirdly, I beseech Thee, my Saviour, entirely to
remove the darkness from the eyes of our souls, in
order that we may know aright, as Homer says, both
God and men.’ (See J. A. Farrer, Paganism and
Christianity , p. 44.)

I shall devote the rest of this introductory lecture
to reading some extracts which will show, I hope,
that the heathen also could utter prayers, and some
prayers which require but little modification before
we ourselves can join in them.

Egyptian Prayer,

‘ Hail to Thee, maker of all beings, Lord of law, Father
of the Gods ; maker of men, creator of beasts ; Lord of

grains, making food for the beasts of the field The

One alone without a second King alone, single among

the Gods ; of many names, unknown is their number.

I come to Thee, O Lord of the Gods, who hast existed from
the beginning, eternal God, who hast made all things that
are. Thy name be my protection ; prolong my term of life

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

to a good age ; may my son be in my place (after me) ; may
my dignity remain with him (and his) for ever, as is done to
the righteous, who is glorious in the house of his Lord.

Who then art Thou, 0 my father Amon? Doth a father
forget his son? Surely a wretched lot awaitetb him who
opposes Thy will; but blessed is he who knoweth Thee, for
Thy deeds proceed from a heart full of love. I call upon
Thee, 0 my father Amon! behold me in the midst of many
peoples, unknown to me; all nations are united against me,
and I am alone ; no other is with me. My many warriors
have abandoned me, none of my horsemen hath looked
towards me ; and when I called them, none hath listened to
my voice. But I believe that Amon is worth more to me
than a million of warriors, than a hundred thousand horse-
men and ten thousands of brothers and sons, even were
they all gathered together. The work of many men is
nought ; Amon will prevail over them.’

(Prom Le Page Eenouf, Hiblert Lectures, p. 227.)

An Accadian Prayer.

“O my God, the lord of prayer, may my prayer address
thee!

O my goddess, the lady of supplication, may my supplica-
tion address thee!

O Matd (Matu), the lord of the mountain, may my prayer
address thee!

0 Gubarra, lady of Eden (sic), may my prayer address thee !

0 Lord of heaven and earth, lord of Eridu, may my
supplication address thee!

0 Merodach (Asar-mula-dag), lord of Tin-tir (Babylon)
may my prayer address thee!

0 wife of him, (the princely offspring (?) of heaven and
earth), may my supplication address thee!

O (messenger of the spirit) of the god who proclaims (the
good name), may my prayer address thee!

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

O (bride, first-born of) Uras (?), may my supplication
address thee !

O (lady, who binds the hostile (?) mouth), may my prayer
address thee !

0 (exalted one, the great goddess, my lady Nana) may
my supplication address thee !

May it say to thee : ‘ (Direct thine eye kindly unto me)/
May it say to thee : 4 (Turn thy face kindly to me)/
(May it say to thee : ‘ Let thy heart rest/)

(May it say to thee: ‘Let thy liver be quieted/)

(May it say to thee : ‘ Let thy heart, like the heart of a

mother who has borne children, be gladdened/)

( c As a mother who has borne children, as a father who
has begotten a child, let it be gladdened/) ”

(Sayce, Ribbert Lectures , p. 336.)

A Babylonian Prayer.

f O my God who art violent (against me), receive (my
supplication).

O my Goddess, thou who art fierce (towards me), accept
(my prayer).

Accept my prayer, (may thy liver be quieted).

O my lord, long-suffering (and) merciful, (may thy heart
be appeased).

By day, directing unto death that which destroys me, O
my God, interpret (the vision).

0 my goddess, look upon me and accept my prayer,
itay my sin be forgiven, may my transgression be cleansed.
Let the yoke be unbound, the chain be loosed.

May the seven winds carry away my groaning.

May I strip off my evil so that the bird bear (it) up to
heaven.

May the fish carry away my trouble, may the river bear
(it) along.

May the reptile of the field receive (it) from me; may
the waters of the river cleanse me as they flow.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

Make me shine as a mask of gold.

May I be precious in thy sight as a goblet (?) of glass.

Burn up (?) my evil, knit together my life; bind together
thy altar, that I may set up thine image.

Let me pass from my evil, and let me be kept with thee.

Enlighten me and let me dream a favourable dream.

May the dream that I dream be favourable ; may the
dream that I dream, be established.

Turn the dream that I dream into a blessing.

May Makhir the god of dreams rest upon my head.

Yea, let me enter into E-Sagil, the palace of the gods,
the temple of life.

To Merodach, the merciful, to blessedness, to prospering
hands, entrust me.

Let me exalt thy greatness, let me magnify thy divinity.

Let the men of my city honour thy mighty deeds. 5

(Sayce, JUbbcrt Lectures^ p. fU5.)

A Vedic Prayer.

Rig-veda VII. 89 :

1. Let me not yet, 0 Vanma, enter into the house of
clay; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by
the wind; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright
god, have I gone to the wrong shore ; have mercy, almighty,
have mercy!

4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood
in the midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have
mercy !

6. Whenever we men, 0 Varuwa, commit an offence
before the heavenly host; whenever we break the law
through thoughtlessness ; hurt us not, 0 God, for this offence !

(M. il., History of Ancient Smsterii Literature , p, 540. )

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

Another Vedic Prayer.

‘Let us he blessed in thy service, 0 Varum, for we
always think of thee and praise thee, greeting thee day
by day, like the fires lighted on the altar, at the approach
of the rich dawns/ 2.

‘ O Varima, our guide, let us stand in thy keeping, thou
who art rich in heroes and praised far and wide ! And you,
unconquered sons of Aditi, deign to accept us as your friends,
0 gods ! 7 3.

‘Aditya, the ruler, sent forth these rivers; they follow
the law of Varima. They tire not, they cease not; like birds
they fly quickly everywhere/ 4.

‘ Take from me my sin, like a fetter, and we shall increase,
O Varum, the spring of thy law. Let not the thread (of
life) be cut while I weave my song ! Let not the form of the
workman break before the time ! ' 5.

c Take far away from me this terror, O Varum ! Thou, O
righteous king, have mercy on me ! Like as a rope from a
calf, remove from me my sin ; for away from thee I am not
master even of the twinkling of an eye/ 6.

‘ Do not strike us, Varum, with weapons which at thy will
hurt the evil-doer. Let us not go where the light has
vanished ! Scatter our enemies, that we may live/ 7.

‘We did formerly, O Varum, and do now, and shall in
future also, sing praises to thee, O mighty one! For on
thee, unconquerable hero, rest all statutes, immovable, as if
established on a rock/ 8.

‘Move far away from me all self-committed guilt, and
may I not, O king, suffer for what others have committed!
Many dawns have not yet dawned ; grant us to live in them,
O Varum/ 9.

(M. M., Indift, p. 195, from Eig-veda II. 28.)

(4) C

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

An Avestio Prayer.

1. 4 Blessed is be, blessed is every one, to whom Ahura-
mazda, ruling by bis own will, shall grant the two ever-
lasting powers (health and immortality). For this very
good I beseech Thee. Mayest Thou through Thy angel of
piety, give me happiness, the good true things, and the
possession of the good mind.

2. I believe Thee to be the best being of all, the source of
light for the world. Every one shall believe in Thee as
the source of light; Thee, 0 Mazda, most beneficent spirit!
Thou createdst all good true things by means of the power
of Thy good mind at any time, and promisedst us a long life.

4. I will believe Thee to be the powerful benefactor, O
Mazda! For Thou givest with Thy hand, filled with helps,
good to the righteous man, as well as to the wicked, by
means of the warmth of the fire strengthening the good
things. For this reason the vigour of the good mind has
fallen to my lot.

5. Thus I believed in Thee, 0 Ahuramazda! as the
furtherer of what is good ; because I beheld Thee to be the
primeval cause of life in the creation ; for Thou, who bast
rewards for deeds and words, hast given evil to the bad and
good to the good. I will believe in Thee, 0 Ahura l in the
last period of the world.

6. In whatever period of my life I believed in Thee, 0

Mazda, munificent spirit ! in that Thou earnest with wealth,
and with the good mind through whose actions our settle-
ments thrive ’

(M. Haug, Essays on the Parsis , p. 155 seq., from Yasna XLIIL
1-6 ; see also Mills, S, B. E., vol. xxxi. p. 08.)

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

Verses from Zoroaster’s Gathas.

* This I ask Thee, O Ahura ! tell me aright : When praise
is to be offered, how (shall I complete) the praise of One
like You, O Mazda ? Let one like Thee declare it earnestly
to the friend who is such as I, thus through Thy righteous-
ness to offer friendly help to us, so that One like Thee may
draw near us through Thy good mind. 1.

This I ask Thee, O Ahura ! tell me aright : Who by genera-
tion was the first father of the righteous order ? Who gave
the (recurring) sun and stars their (undeviating) way ? Who
established that whereby the moon waxes, and whereby she
wanes, save Thee 1 These things, 0 Great Creator I would I
know, and others likewise still. 3.

This I ask Thee, 0 Ahura! tell me aright: Who from
beneath hath sustained the earth and the clouds above that
they do not fall ? Who made the waters and the plants ? Who
to the wind has yoked on the storm-clouds, the swift and
fleetest ? Who, 0 Great Creator 1 is the inspirer of the good
thoughts (within our souls) ? 4.

This I ask Thee, 0 Ahura ! tell me aright : Who, as a
skilful artizan, hath made the lights and the darkness 1 ?
Who, as thus skilful, has made sleep and the zest (of waking
hours) % Who spread the dawns, the noontides, and the mid-
night, monitors to discerning (man), duty’s true (guides) ? 5.

This I ask Thee, 0 Ahura ! tell me aright : These things
which I shall speak forth, if they are truly thus. Doth the
piety (which we cherish) increase in reality the sacred
orderliness within our actions? To these Thy true saints
hath she given the realm through the Good Mind. For
whom hast Thou made the mother-kine, the producer of
joy? 6.

This I ask Thee, 0 Ahura! tell me aright, that I may
ponder these which are Thy revelations, O Mazda ! and the

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

words which were asked (of Thee) by Thy Good Mind (within
ns), and that whereby we may attain through Thine order,
to this life’s perfection. Yea, how may my soul with joy-
fulness increase in goodness ? Let it thus be. 8,

This I ask Thee, 0 Ahura ! tell us aright : How shall I
banish this Demon of the Lie from us hence to those beneath
who are filled with rebellion ? The friends of righteousness
(as it lives in Thy saints) gain no light (from their teachings),
nor have they loved the questions which Thy Good Mind
(asks in the soul).’ 13.

(Yasna XLIV : L. II. Mills, S. B. vol. xxxi. pp. Ill seq.)

Chinese Prayer. The Emperor’s Prayer.

4 To Thee, 0 mysteriously- working Maker, I look up in
thought. How imperial is the expansive arch, where Thou
dwellest . . . Thy servant, I am hut a reed or willow ; my
heart is hut as that of an ant ; yet have I received Thy
favouring decree, appointing me to the government of the
empire. I deeply cherish a sense of my ignorance and blind-
ness, and am afraid lest I prove unworthy of Thy great
favours. Therefore will I observe all the rules and statutes,
striving, insignificant as I am, to discharge my loyal duty.
Far distant here, I look up to Thy heavenly palace. Come
in Thy precious chariot to the altar. Thy servant, I bow
my head to the earth, reverently expecting Thine abundant
grace. All my officers are here arranged along with me,
joyfully worshipping before Thee. All the spirits accom-
pany Thee as guards, (filling the air) from the East to the
West. Thy servant, I prostrate myself to meet Thee, and
reverently look up for Thy coming, 0 god. O that Thou
wouldest vouchsafe to accept our offerings, and regard us,
while thus we worship Thee, whose goodness is inexhaus-
tible!’

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF RELIGION.

4 Thou hast vouchsafed, O God, to hear us, for Thou
regardest us as a Father. I, Thy child, dull and unen-
lightened, am unable to show forth my dutiful feelings. I
thank Thee that Thou hast accepted the intimation.
Honourable is Thy great name. With reverence we spread
out these gems and silks, and, as swallows rejoicing in the
spring, praise Thine abundant love/

(From the Imperial Prayer-book in the time of the Emperor Kea-
tsing.. See James Legge, On the Notions of the Chinese concerning God and
Spirits, Hong-kong, 1852, p. 24. The date of this prayer is modern.)

Mohammedan Profession.

Quran, II. 255-256 :

4 0 ye who believe ! expend in alms of what we have be-
stowed upon you, before the day comes in which is no barter,
and no friendship, and no intercession ; and the misbelievers,
they are the unjust.

God, there is no god but He, the living, the self-sub-
sistent. Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. His is what is
in the heavens and what is in the earth. Who is" it that
intercedes with Him save by His permission? He knows
what is before them and what behind them, and they com-
prehend not aught of his knowledge but of what He pleases.
His throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and it
tires Him not to guard them both, for He is high and grand/

(Palmer, S. B . 2?., vi. 39 seq.)

Modern Hindu Prayer.

1 . e Whatsoever hath been made, God made. Whatsoever is
to be made, God will make. Whatsoever is, God maketh, —
then why do any of ye afliict yourselves ?

2. Dadu sayeth, Thou, 0 God ! art the author of all
things which have been made, and from thee will originate
all things which are to be made. Thou art the maker, and
the cause of all things made. There is none other but Thee.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

3. He is my God, who maketh all things perfect. Meditate
upon him in whose hands are life and death.

4. He is my God, who created heaven, earth, hell, and the
intermediate space; who is the beginning and end of all
creation ; and who provideth for all.

5. I believe that God made man, and that he maketh
everything. He is my friend.

6. Let faith in God characterize all your thoughts, words,
and actions. He who serveth God, places confidence in
nothing else.

7. If the remembrance of God be in your hearts, ye will
be able to accomplish things which are impracticable. But
those who seek the paths of God are few !

8. He who understandeth how to render his calling sinless,
shall be happy in that calling, provided he be with God.

9. 0 foolish one ! God is not far from you. He is near
you. You are ignorant, but he knoweth everything, and
is careful in bestowing.

10. Whatever is the will of God, will assuredly happen;
therefore do not destroy yourselves by anxiety, but listen,

11. Adversity is good, if on account of God; but it is
useless to pain the body. Without God, the comforts of
wealth are unprofitable.

12. He that believeth not in the one God, hath an un-
settled mind ; he will be in sorrow, though in the pos-
session of riches : but God is without price.

13. God is my clothing and my dwelling. He is my
ruler, my body, and my soul.

14. God ever fostereth his creatures; even as a mother
serves her offspring, and keepeth it from harm.

15. 0 God, thou who art the truth, grant me content-
ment, love, devotion, and faith. Thy servant Dadu prayeth
for true patience, and that he may b© devoted to thee/

(Verses ^oni) Dadu, the founder of the Dadupanthi sect, about

THE HISTORICAL STUDY OX RELIGION.

I confess that my heart beats with joy whenever I
meet with such utterances in the Sacred Books of the
East. A sudden brightness seems to spread over the
darkest valleys of the earth. We learn that no human
soul was ever quite forgotten, and that there are no
clouds of superstition through which the rays of
eternal truth cannot pierce. Such moments are the best
rewards to the student of the religions of the world —
they are moments of true revelation, revealing the fact
that God has not forsaken any of his children, if only
they feel after Him, if haply they may find him. I
am quite aware how easy it is to find fault with these
childish gropings, and how readily people join in a
laugh when some strange and to us grotesque expres-
sion is pointed out in the prayers of the old world.

We know how easy it is to pass from the sublime to
the ridiculous, and nowhere is this more the case than
in religion. Perhaps Jelaleddin s lesson in his Mesnevi
may not be thrown away even on modern scoffers.

Moses and tlie Shepherd.

“ Moses once heard a shepherd praying as follows;

4 O God, show me where Thou art, that I may become
Thy servant. I will clean Thy shoes and comb Thy
hair, and sew Thy clothes, and fetch Thee milk.’
When Moses heard him praying in this senseless
manner, he rebuked him, saying, 4 0 foolish one,
though your father was a Mussulman, you have be-
come an infidel. God is a Spirit, and needs not such
gross ministrations as, in your ignorance, you suppose/
The shepherd was abashed at his rebuke, and tore his
clothes and fled away into the desert. Then a voice
from heaven was heard, saying, 4 0 Moses, wherefore /
have you driven away my servant? Your office is to j

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

reconcile my people with me, not to drive them away
from me. I have given to each race different usages
and forms of praising and adoring me. I have no
need of their praises, being exalted above all such
needs. I regard not the words that are spoken, but
the heart that offers them. I do not require fine
words, but a burning heart. Men’s ways of showing de-
votion to me are various, but so long as the devotions
are genuine, they are accepted.’ ”

Advantages of a Comparative Study of Religions.

I have never disguised my conviction that a com-
parative study of the religions of the world, so far
from undermining the faith in our own religion, serves
only to make us see more clearly what is the distinctive
and essential character of Christ’s teaching, and helps
us to discover the strong rock on which the Christian
as well as every other religion must be founded.

But as a good general, if he wishes to defend a
fortress, has often to insist that the surrounding villas
and pleasure grounds should be razed, so as not to
serve as a protection to the enemy, those also w T ho
wish to defend the stronghold of their own religion
have often to insist on destroying the outlying in-
trenchments and useless ramparts which, though they
may be dear to many from long association, offer no
real security, nay, are dangerous as lending a support
to the enemy, that is to say, to those who try to sap
the rock on which all true religion, call it natural or
supernatural, must be founded.

It is quite true, for instance, that the fact that we
meet with so-called miracles in almost every religion,
cannot but tell upon us and change our very concep-

THE HTSTOBICAXi STUDY OF BELIGION.

tion of a miracle. If Comparative Theology has taught
us anything, it has taught us that a belief in miracles,
so far from being impossible, is almost inevitable, and
that it springs everywhere from the same source, a
deep veneration felt by men, women, and children
for the founders and teachers of their religion. This
gives to all miracles a new, it may be, a more profound
meaning. It relieves us at once from the never-ending
discussions of what is possible, probable, or real, of
what is rational, irrational, natural, or supernatural. It
gives us true mirco, instead of small miracula , it makes
us honest towards ourselves, and honest towards the
founder of our own religion. It places us in a new and
r/al world where all is miraculous, all is admirable,
/but where there is no room for small surprises, a world
in which no sparrow can fall to the ground without the
Father, a world of faith, and not of sight 1 . If we
compare the treatment which miracles received from
Hume with the treatment which they now receive from
students of Comparative Theology, we see that, after
all, the world is moving, nay even the theological world.
Few only will now deny that Christians can be Chris-
tians without what was called a belief in miracles;
nay, few will deny that they are better Christians
without, than with that belief. What the students
of Comparative Theology take away with one hand,
they restore a hundredfold with the other. That in
our time a man like Professor Huxley should have
had to waste his time on disproving the miracle of
the Gergesenes by scientific arguments, will rank
hereafter as one of the most curious survivals in the
history of theology.

1 See some excellent remarks on this point in the Kev, Charles /
Gore’s Hampton Lectures , p. ISO.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

When delivering these lectures, I confess that what
I feared far more than the taunts of those who, like
Henry VIII, call themselves the defenders of the faith,
were the suspicions of those who might doubt my
perfect fairness and impartiality in defending Chris-
tianity by showing how, if only properly understood,
it is infinitely superior to all other religions. A good
cause and a sacred cause does not gain, it is only
damaged, by a dishonest defence, and I do not blame
those who object to a Christian Advocate, an office till
lately maintained at Cambridge, pleading the cause of
Christianity against all other religions. It is on that
account that the attacks of certain Christian Divines
have really been most welcome to me, for they have
shown at all events that I hold no brief from them,
and that if I and those who honestly share my con-
victions claim a perfect right to the name of Chris-
tians, we do so with a good conscience. We have sub-
jected Christianity to the severest criticism and have
not found it wanting. We have done what St. Paul
exhorts every Christian to do, we have proved every-
thing, we have not been afraid to compare Christianity
with any other religion, and if we have retained it, we
have done so, because we found it best. All religions,
Christianity not excepted, seem really to have suffered
far more from their defenders than from their assail-
ants, and I certainly know no greater danger to
Christianity than that contempt of Natural Religion
which has of late been expressed with so much vio-
lence by those who have so persistently attacked both
the founder of this lectureship on Natural Religion
and the lecturers, nay even those who have ventured
to attend their lectures.

LECTURE II.

THE TRUE VALUE OE THE SACRED BOOKS
EXAMINED.

Historical Documents for Studying the Origin of Religion.

O RIENTAL scholars have often been charged with
exaggerating the value of the Sacred Books
of the East for studying the origin and growth of
religion. It cannot be denied that these books are
much less perfect than we could wish them to be.
They are poor fragments only, and the time when
they were collected and reduced to writing is in
most cases far removed from the date of their original
composition, still more from the times which they
profess to describe. All this is true ; but my critics
ought to have known that, so far from wishing to
hide these facts, I have myself been the first to call
attention to them again and again. Wherever we
meet with a religion, it has always long passed its
childhood; it is generally full-grown, and presup-
poses a past which is far beyond the reach of any
historical plummet. Even with regard to modern
religions, such as Christianity and Islam, we know
very little indeed about their real historical begin-
nings or antecedents. Though we may know their
cradle and those who stood around it^ the powerful

LECTURE II.

personality of the founders seems in each case to have
overshadowed all that was around and before them ;
nay, it may sometimes have been the object of their
disciples and immediate followers to represent the new
religion as entirely new, as really the creation of one
mind, though no historical religion can ever be that ;
and to ignore all historical influences that are at
work in forming the mind of the real founder of an
historical religion 1 . With regard to more ancient
religions, we hardly ever reach their deepest springs,
as little as we can hope to reach the lowest strata
of ancient languages. And yet religion, like language,
exhibits everywhere the clear traces of historical an-
tecedents and of a continuous development.

Beligious Language.

It has been my object in my former lectures to
show that there is but one way by which we may
get, so to say, behind that phase of a religion which
is represented to us in its sacred or canonical books.
Some of the most valuable historical documents of
religion lie really imbedded in the language of re-
ligion, in the names of the various deities, and in the
name which survives in the end as that of the one
true God. Certain expressions for sacrifice also, for
sin, for breath and soul and all the rest, disclose occa-
sionally some of the religious thoughts of the people
qigong whom^these Sacred Books grew up. I have
also triedfer show how much may be gained by a
comparison of these ancient religious terminologies,
and how more particularly the religious terminology

1 See Kuenen, ffiblcrt Lectures, p. 189 seq.

THE TRUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 29

of ancient India sheds the most welcome light on
many of the religions expressions that have become
obscure or altogether unmeaning even in Greek and
Latin.

How should we have known that Zeus meant
originally the bright light of the sky, and that deus
was at first an adjective meaning bright, but for the
evidence supplied to us in the Veda? This lesson
of Zeus or Jupiter cannot be dinned too often into
the ears of the incredulous, or rather the ignorant,
who fail to see that the Pantheon of Zeus cannot be
separated from Zeus himself, and that the other Olym-
pian gods must have had the same physical beginnings
as Zeus, the father of gods and men. There are still a
few unbelievers left who shake their wise heads when
they are told that Erinys meant the dawn, Agni
fire, and Marut or Mars the stormwind, quite as cer-
tainly as that Eos meant the dawn, Helios the sun,
and Selene the moon. If they did not, what did
these names mean, unless they meant nothing at all!

When we have once gained in this, the earliest
germinal stage of religious thought and language, a
real historical background for the religions of India,
Greece, and Eome, we have learnt a lesson which we
may safely apply to other religions also, though no
doubt with certain modifications, namely that there
is a meaning in every divine name, and that an
intimate relation exists between a religion and the
language in which it was born and sent out into
the world. When that is done, we may proceed to
the Sacred Books and collect from them as much in-
formation as we can concerning the great religions of
the world in their subsequent historical development.

LECTUEE XI.

Literary Documents.

And here, whatever may be said to the contrary,
we have nothing more important, nothing that can
more safely be relied upon than the literary docu-
ments which some of the ancient religions of the
world have left us, and which were recognised as
authoritative by the ancients themselves. These
materials have become accessible of late years only,
and it has been my object, with the assistance of some
of my friends, to bring out a very large collection
of translations of these Sacred Books of the East.
That collection amounts now to forty-two volumes,
and will in future enable every student of Comparative
Theology to judge for himself of the true nature of the
religious beliefs of the principal nations of antiquity.

Modern Date of Sacred Books.

If people like to call these books modern, let them
do so, but let them remember that at all events there
is nothing more ancient in any literature. In almost
every country it may be said that the history of
literature begins with Sacred Books, nay, that the very
idea of literature took its origin from these Sacred
Books. Literature, at least a written literature, and,
most of all, a literature in alphabetic writing is,
according to its very nature, a very modem inven-
tion. There can be no doubt that the origin of all
the ancient religions of the world goes back to a
time when writing for literary purposes was as yet
entirely unknown. I still hold that book-writing or
writing for literary purposes does not appear any-
where in the history of the world much before the

THE TKUE VALUE OF THE SACKED BOOKS.

seventh century B.c. I know that I stand almost
alone in dating the existence of a written literature,
of real books that were meant to be read by the
people at large, from so late a period. But I do
not know of any facts that enable us to speak with
confidence of a literature, in the true sense of the
word, before that date. I have been told that the
very latest date unanimously assigned by all com-
petent Semitic scholars to the E documents of the
O.T. is 750 b.c. But no one has shown in what alpha-
bet, nay, even in what dialect they were then written.
I have been reminded also of the much earlier date of
an Egyptian and Babylonian literature, but I thought
I had carefully guarded against such a reminder,
by speaking of books in alphabetic writing only.
Books presuppose the existence not only of people
who can write, but likewise of people who can read,
and their number in the year 750 b.c. must have
been very small indeed.

To those who are not acquainted with the powers
of the human memory when well disciplined, or rather
when not systematically ruined, as ours has been, it
may seem almost incredible that so much of the
ancient traditional literature should have been com-
posed, and should have survived during so many
centuries, before it was finally consigned to writing.
Still we have got so far, that everybody now admits
that the poets of the Veda did not write their hymns,
and that Zoroaster did not leave any written documents.
There is no word for writing in the Veda, neither is
there, as Dr. Haug (Essays on the Parsis , p. 136 n.)
has shown, in the Avesta. I have myself pointed out
bow familiar the idea of writing seems to have been to

LECTUBE II.

the authors of some of the books of the Old Testament,
and how this affects the date of these books.

We read in the First Book of Kings iv. 3, of scribes
and recorders at the court of King Solomon, and the
same officers are mentioned again in 2 Kings xviii. 18,
at the court of Hezekiah, while in the reign of Josiah
we actually read of the discovery of the Book of the
Law. But we find the same anachronisms elsewhere.
Thrones and sceptres are ascribed to kings who never
had them, and in the Shahnameh (910, 5) we read of
Feridun as having not only built a fire-temple in
Baikend, but as having deposited there a copy of the
Avesta written in golden (cuneiform ?) letters. Kir-
jath-sepher, the city of letters, mentioned in the Book
of Joshua xv. 15, refers probably to some inscription,
in the neighbourhood, not to books.

Of Buddha also it may now be asserted without fear
of contradiction that he never left any MSS. of his
discourses 1 . If it had been otherwise, it would cer-
tainly have been mentioned, as so many less important
things 'concerning Buddha’s daily life and occupations
have, been mentioned in the Buddhist canon. And
although to us it may seem almost impossible that
long compositions in poetry, nay even in prose,
should have been elaborated and handed down by
oral tradition only, it is important to observe that
the ancients themselves never express any surprise
at the extraordinary achievements of the human
memory, whereas the very idea of an alphabet, of
alphabetic writing, or of paper and ink, is entirely
absent from thoir minds.

I readily admit therefore that whatover we possess
1 See Der Buddhismus , yon WassiJjew, p, 247.

THE TEUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 33

of sacred literature in writing is comparatively
modern; also that it represents a very small por-
tion only of what originally existed. We know that
even after a hook had been written, the danger of
loss was by no means past. We know how much of
Greek and Latin literature that was actually consigned
to writing has been lost. Aeschylus is said to have
composed ninety plays. We possess MSS. of seven
only. And what has become of the works of Berosus,
Manetho, Sanchoniathan? What of the complete
MSS. of Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, Dio Cassius ? what of those of Livy
and Tacitus 1

If therefore people will have it that what we possess
of sacred books is modern, I do not object, if only
they will define what they mean by modern. And
if they insist on calling what has been saved out of
the general shipwreck mere flotsam and jetsam, we
need not quarrel about such names. Much has been
lost of the ancient literary monuments of almost
every religion, but that makes what is left all the
more valuable to us. ^

Fragmentary Character of the Sacred Boohs of India.

In Sanskrit literature we frequently meet with
references to lost books. It is not an uncommon
practice in theological controversy in India to appeal
to lost /Sakhas of the Veda, particularly when customs ‘
for which there is no authority in the existing Vedas
have to be defended. When, for instance, European
scholars had proved that there was no authority for
the burning of widows in the Veda, as known to us,
native scholars appealed to lost /Sakhas of the Veda
(4) X>

LECTURE IX.

in support of this cruel custom. However, native
casuists themselves have supplied us with the right
answer to this kind of argument. They call it c the
argument of the skull/ and they remark with great
shrewdness that you might as well bring a skull into
court as a witness, as appeal to a lost chapter of
the Yeda in support of any prevailing custom or
doctrine. $akha means a branch, and as the Veda
is often represented as a tree, a $aklia of the Veda
is what we also might call a branch of the Veda.

We must not imagine, however, that what we now
possess of Vedic literature is all that ever existed, or
that it can give us anything like a complete image of
Vedic religion.

The Buddhists are likewise in the habit of speaking
of some of the words or sayings of Buddha as being
lost, or not recorded.

In the Old Testament we have the well-known
allusions to the Book of Jasher (2 Sam. i. 18), and
the Wars of God (Num. xxi. 14), the Chronicles of
David, and the Acts of Solomon, which prove the
former existence, if not of books, at least of popular
songs and legends under those titles.

And with regard to the New Testament also, not
only does St. Luke tell us that c many had taken in
hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters
which have been fulfilled among us, even as they
delivered them unto us, which from the beginning
were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word/ but
we know that there existed in the early centuries
other Gospels and other Epistles which have either
been lost or have been declared apocryphal by later
authorities, such as the Gospels according to the

THE TKUE VALUE OF THE SACKED BOOKS. 35

Hebrews and the Egyptians, the Acts of Andrew,
John, and Thomas, the Epistles of St. Paul to the
Laodiceans, the Epistles of Barnabas and of St.
Clement, &C. 1 "We read besides, at the end of the
Fourth Gospel, that £ there were also many other
things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be
written every one, I suppose that even the world
itself would not contain the books that should be
written/ This may be an exaggeration, but it ought
to be at the same time a warning against the supposi-
tion that the New Testament can ever give us a com-
plete account of the religious teaching of Christ.

loss of the Sacred Literature of Persia.

There is no religion, however, where we can study
the loss of a great portion of its sacred literature so
closely as in the religion of Zoroaster and his disciples,
and it is well that we should learn a lesson from it.
What by a very erroneous name we call the Zend
Avesta is a book of very moderate dimensions. I
explained to you, I believe, in a former lecture, why
Zend Avesta is an erroneous name. The Persians call
their sacred writings not Zend Avesta, but Avesta
Zend, or in Pehlevi Avist&k va Zand, and this
means simply text and commentary. Avesta is the
text, Zend the commentary. Avesta is probably
derived from vid, to know, from which, you may
remember, we have also the name Veda 2 . But
avesta is a participle passive, originally a + vista
.(for vid-ta), and meant therefore what is known or

1 See J. E. Carpenter, The First Three Gospels, p. 8.

2 Oppert ( Joum . Asiat., 1872, March) compares the old Persian
abasta, law.

LECTURE II,

what has been made known, while Zend is derived
from the Aryan root *zeno, to know, in Sanskrit
gh&, Greek yi-yv(&-crK«), and meant therefore originally
likewise knowledge or understanding of the Avesta.
While avista was used as the name of Zarathushtra’s
ancient teachings, Zend was applied to all later
explanations of those sacred texts, and particularly
to the translations and explanations of the old text
in Pehlevi or Pahlavi, the Persian language as
spoken in the Sassanian kingdom. In spite of this,
it has become the custom to call the ancient language
of Zarathushtra Zend, literally, commentary, and to
speak of what is left us of the sacred code of the
Zoroastrians as the Zend Avesta. This is one. of
those mistakes which it will be difficult to get rid
of; scholars seem to have agreed to accept it as
inevitable, and they will probably continue to speak
of the Zend Avesta, and of the Zend language. Some
writers, who evidently imagine that Zoroaster wor-
shipped the fire instead of Ormazd, his supreme deity,
and who suppose that Yesta was originally a deity
of the fire, have actually gone so far as to spell Zenda
Vesta as if Vesta was the name of the sacred fire of the
Parsis. If we wish to be correct, we should speak of
the Avesta as the ancient texts of Zarathushtra, and
we should call Zend all that has been written at a
later time, whether in the ancient Avestic language
or in Pehlevi, by way of translation and interpreta-
tion of the Avesta. This Pehlevi is simply the old
name for the Persian language, and there can be little
doubt that Pehlevi, which is the Persian name for
what is ancient, was derived from pahlav, a hero-
warrior, which pahlav again is a regular modification

THE TBT3E VALUE OF THE SACKED BOOKS, 37

of parthav, the name of the Parthians who were the
rulers of Persia for nearly five hundred years (256
b. o,~226 A.D.). But though Pehlevi would thus seem
to mean the language of the Parthians, it is really
the name of the Persian language, as spoken in Persia
when under Parthian rule. It is an Aryan language
written in a peculiar Semitic alphabet and mixed
with many Semitic words. The first traces of Pehlevi
have been discovered on coins referred to the third
or fourth century B. c., possibly even on some tablets
found in Nineveh, and ascribed to the seventh century
b. c. (Haug’s Essays, p. 81). We find Pehlevi written
in two alphabets, as in the famous inscriptions of
Hajiab&d (third century A.D.), found near the ruins of
Persepolis 1 . Besides the language of the Avesta,
which we call Zend, and the language of the glosses
and translations, -which we call Pehlevi, there is the
Pazend, originally not the name of a language, as
little as Zend was, but the name of a commentary on
a commentary. There are such Pazends written in
Avestic 2 or in Pehlevi. But when used as the name of a
language, Pazend means mediaeval Iranian, used chiefly
in the transcriptions of Pehlevi texts, written either
in Avestic or Persian characters, and freed from all
Semitic ingredients. In fact the language of the
great epic poet Eirdusi (1000 a.d.) does not differ
much from that of Pazend ; and both are the lineal
descendants of Pehlevi and ancient Persian.

One thing, however, is quite certain, namely, that
the sacred literature which once existed in these three

1 See Hang, 1. c. p, 87, and Friedrich Muller, Die Pahlawi Inschriften
von Badsidbad.

2 Haug, 1. c: p, 122.

LECTUKE II.

successive languages, Avestic, Pehlevi, and Pazend,
must have been infinitely larger than what we now
possess.

It is important to observe that the existence of this
much larger ancient sacred literature in Persia was
known even to Greeks and Romans, such as Her-
mippos 1 , who wrote his book £ On the Magi 5 while
residing at Smyrna. He lived in the middle of the
third century B.c. Though this book is lost, it is
quoted by Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Pliny.
Pliny (H. N . xxx. 2) tells us that Hermippos studied
the books of Zoroaster, which were then said to
comprise two millions of lines. Even so late an
authority as Abu Jafir Attavari (an Arabic historian)
assures us that Zoroaster’s writings covered twelve
hundred cowhides (parchments).

These statements of classical writers are confirmed
to a great extent by the traditions current among the
followers of Zoroaster in Persia, who agree in accusing
Alexander the Great of having destroyed or carried
off their sacred MSS. We read in the DinkarcZ (West,
p. 412) that the first collection of the sacred texts of
Zoroaster took place at the time of VLtasp, the
mythical ruler who accepted the religion of Zoroaster.
Afterwards, we are told, Darai commanded that two
complete copies of the whole Avesta and Zend should
be preserved, one in the treasury of Shapigftn, and
one in the fortress of written documents. This Darai
is likewise more or less mythical, but he is generally
considered by the Persian poets as the predecessor of
Alexander. We are on more historical ground when
we are told in the Dinkar<£ (West, p. xxxi) that the
1 Diogenes Laertius, Drooem. 6*

THE TBUE VALUE OF THE SACBED BOOKS. 39

MS. which, was in the fortress of documents came to
be burnt, while that in the treasury of Shapigan fell
into the hands of the Greeks and was translated by or
for Alexander into the Greek language, as c information
connected with ancient times/ Now the fact that the
Eoyal Palace at Persepolis was burnt by Alexander
in a drunken frolic is confirmed by Greek historians,
though nothing is said by them of a Greek translation
of the Avestic writings. It is quite possible, however,
that Hermippos had before him the very MS. that
had been carried away from the treasury of Shapigan
by Alexander’s soldiers.

We hear nothing more about the Avesta till we
come to the time of Valkhas, evidently a Vologeses,
possibly Yologeses I, the contemporary of Nero. Though
he was a Parthian ruler, we are told in the DinkarcZ
that he ordered ‘ the careful preservation and making
of memoranda for the royal city, of the Avesta and
Zend as it had purely come unto them, and also of
whatever instruction, due to it, had remained written
about, as well as deliverable by the tongue through a
high-priest, in a scattered state in the country of
Iran, owing to the ravages and devastations of Alex-
ander, and the cavalry and infantry of the Arumans
(Greeks)/

Whatever the exact meaning of these words may
be, they clearly imply that an attempt had been made,
even before the rise of the Sassanian dynasty, to
collect what could still be collected of the old sacred
writings, either from scattered fragments of MSS. or
from oral tradition. It does not appear that any
attempt of the same kind had been made before that
time, and after the devastations ascribed to Alexander.

IiECTUBE II.

It does not seem to me to follow that, as M. Dar-
mesteter suggests ($. B. E. iv. Introd.), the Parthian
rulers had actually embraced Zoroastrianism as the
state-religion of their kingdom. That was reserved for
the Sassanians. But it shows at all events that they
valued the ancient faith of their subjects, and it is
a fact that some of the Philhellenic Parthian princes
had actually adopted it.

The real revival, however, of Zoroastrianism as the
national religion of Persia and the final constitution
of the Avestic canon were due, no doubt, to the
Sassanians. We read in the Dinka rd that Arta-
kshatar (ArdesMr), the son of P&pak, king of kings
(a.d. 226-240), summoned Tdsar and other priests to
the capital to settle the true doctrine of the old
religion. His son. Shahpuhar (a. d. 240-271), followed
his example, and brought together a number of secular
writings also, scattered about, as we are told, in the
country, in India, Greece, and elsewhere, and ordered
their collocation with the Avesta. After that a correct
copy was deposited once more in the treasury of
Shapig&n.

Shahpuhar II (Sapores), the son of Afiharmazd
(a.d. 309-379), seems to have done for the Avestic
religion very much what Constantine was doing about
the same time for Christianity. He convoked a
‘ tribunal for the controversy of the inhabitants of all
regions, and brought all statements to proper con-
sideration and investigation/ The heresy with which
Shahpuhar II and Aturpad had to deal was probably
that of Manichaeism. The doctrines of M&ni had
been spreading so widely during the third century
that even a king, Shahpuhar I, was supposed to have

THE TKUE VALUE OF THE SACKED BOOKS. 41

embraced them. Thus while Constantine and Atha-
nasius settled the orthodox doctrines of Christianity at
Nicaea, 325 a.d., Shahpuhar II and Aturpad, the son of
Maraspand, were engaged in Persia in extinguishing the
heresy of Mani and restoring Mazdaism to its original
purity. The collecting of the Nasks and the num-
bering of them as twenty-one, is ascribed to Atftrpad.
Prof. Darmesteter (Introd. p. xxxix) supposes that at
his time it was still possible to make additions to the
Avestic texts, and he points out passages in the
Vendidad which may have reference to the schism of
M&ni, if not even to Christianity, as known in the
East.

At a still later time, under Khusroi (Khosroes),
called Andsharuvan, the son of Kavad (a.d. 531-579),
we read that new heresies had to be suppressed, and
that a new command was given for ‘the proper con-
sideration of the Avesta and Zend of the primitive
Magian statements.’

Soon after followed the Arab conquest, when we
are told that the archives and treasures of the realm
were once more devastated. Still the Mohammedan
conquerors seem to have been far less barbarous than
Alexander and his Greek soldiers,, for when, after the
lapse of three centuries, a new effort was made to
collect the Avestic writings, Atur-farnbagi Farukho-
zad&n was able to make a very complete collection of
the ancient Nasks. Nay, even at the end of the ninth
century, when another high-priest, Aturpad, the son
of Hlmid a the author, or, at all events, the finisher of
the Dinkarc?, made a final collection of the Avesta
and Zend, MSS. of all the Nasks seem to have been
forthcoming with very few exceptions, whether in the

LECTURE II.

ancient Avestic language or in Pehlcvi, so that Aturpad
could give in his Dinkard an almost complete ac-
count of the Zoroastrian religion and its sacred
literature. According to some authorities it was
Atfir-farnbagi Farukho-zMan who began the Dinka rd 9
while Atfirpad, the son of Himid, finis! led it. This
would place the work between 820 and 890 a. d.
Aturpad, or whoever he was, speaks of the twenty- one
Nasks or books of the A vesta, as if he had read them
either in the original language or in their Pehlcvi
translation. The only Nask he failed to obtain was
the Vastag Nask, and the Pehlevi version of the Nadar
Nask. We owe all this information partly to Dr. liaug,
partly to Dr. West, who has recovered large portions
of the MS. of the DinkarcZ and translated them in
volume xxxvii of the Sacred Books of the East
Of these twenty-one Nasks which, since the days
of AtftrpM, the son of Maraspand, constituted the
Avestic canon, and which are reckoned to have con-
sisted of 345,700 words in Zend, and of 2,094,200
words of Pehlevi (West, 1. c. p. xlv), three only, the
14th, 19th, and 21st, have been saved complete. We
are told in one of the Persian Bivayats (& B . E . xxxvii.
p. 437), that even at the time when the first attempt
was made to collect the sacred literature which had
escaped the soldiers of Alexander, portions only of
each Nask were forthcoming, and none in its original
completeness, except the Vind&d, i. e. the VendidM. If
we could trust to this statement, it would prove that
the^di vision in the Nasks existed even before the time
of Aturpad, the son of Maraspand (325 a.ix), and was
possibly of Achaemenian origin.

There are fragments of some other Nasks in exist-

THE TEUE VALUE OF THE SACKED BOOKS- 43

ence, such as the Vist&sp sasto, Hadokhto and Bako,
but what the Parsis now consider as their sacred
canon, consists, besides the Vendid&d, of no more than
the Yasna, Vispered, Yashts, &c., which contain the
bulk of the two other extant Nasks, the Stod and
Bakan Yashts.

The Vendidad contains religious laws and old
legends. The Vispered contains litanies, chiefly for
the celebration of the six season-festivals, the so-called
GahanMrs. The Yasna also contains litanies, but its
most important portion consists of the famous G&thas
(stem g&tli&, nom. sing, g&tha), metrical portions,
written in a more ancient dialect, probably the oldest
nucleus round which all the rest of the Avestic litera-
ture gathered. The Gathas are found in the Yasna,
xxviii-xxxiv, xliii-xlvi, xlvii-1, li, and liii. Each of
these three collections, the Vendidad, Vispered, and
Yasna, if they are copied singly, are generally accom-
panied by a Pehlevi translation and glosses, the so-
called Zend. But if they are all copied together,
according to the order in which they are required
for liturgical purposes, they are without the Pehlevi
translation, and the whole collection is then called the
Vendidad SMah, i.e. the Vendidad pure and simple,
i. e. without commentary.

The remaining fragments are comprehended under
the name of Khorda Avesta or Small Avesta. They
consist chiefly of prayers such as the five Gah, the
Sirozeh, the three Afringan, the five Nyayish, the
Yashts, lit. acts of worship, hymns addressed to the
thirty Izads, of which twenty only have been pre-
served, and some other fragments, for instance, the
Hadhbkht Nask (S. B . E. iv. p. xxx ; xxiii, p. 1).

LECTURE IX.

The Parsis sometimes divide the twenty-one Nasks
into three classes : (1) the Gathic, (2) the Hadha-
matkric, (3) the Law. The Gathic portion represents
the higher spiritual knowledge and spiritual duty, the
Law the lower worldly duty, and the Hadha-mathric
what is between the two (Dinkard!, VIII. 1. 5), In
many cases, however, these subjects are mixed.

The Gathas are evidently the oldest fragments of
the Avestic religion, when it consisted as yet in a
simple belief in Ahuramazda as the Supreme Spirit,
and in a denial of the Daevas, most of them known to
us as worshipped by the poets of the Veda. If Zara-
thushtra was the name of the founder or reformer of
this ancient religion, these G&thas may be ascribed to
him. As their language differs dialectically from that
of the Achaemenian inscriptions, and as the Pehlevi
interpreters, though conversant with the ordinary
Avestic language, found it difficult to interpret these
Gathas, we are justified in supposing that the Gathic
dialect may have been originally the dialect of Media,
for it was from Media that the Magi x , or the teachers
and preachers of the religion of Ahuramazda, are said
to have come 2 . It has been pointed out that certain
deities, well known in the Veda, and in later Avestic
texts, are absent from the Gathas ; for instance, Mithra
and Homa ; also An&hita and the title of Ameshasponta
(Haug, 1. c. p. 259). Many abstract concepts, such as
Asha, righteousness, Vohfimand, good thought, have
not yet assumed a definite mythological personality in

1 Magi, the Magnvas of the G&thas, the Mttgufth in the cuneiform
inscription, the Mog of later times, Haug, p. 1G9 n., possibly the
rab mag of Jerem. xxxix. 3.

2 Darmesteter, S. B. iv. p. xlvi, gives all the evidence for
assigning the origin of Zoroaster's religion to Media.

THE TRUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS.

the chapters composed in the Gathic dialect (Haug,
p. 171). And what is more important still, the Angro
Mainyu or Ahriman of the later Avestic writings has
in the G&thas not yet been invested with the - character
of the Evil Spirit, the Devil, the constant opponent
of Ahuramazda 1 (Haug, 1. c. pp. 303-4) I call this
important, because in the cuneiform inscriptions also
this character does not, and we may probably be justi-
fied in saying, does not yet occur. The early Greek
writers also, such as Herodotos, Theopompos, and Her-
mippos, though acquainted with the Magian doctrine
of a dualism in nature and even in the godhead, do
not seem to have known the name of Ahriman. Plato
knew the name of Ahuramazda, for he calls Zoroaster
the son of Oromasos, which must be meant for Ahura-
mazda, but he too never mentions the name of Angro
Mainyu or Areimanios. Aristotle may have known
the name of Areimanios as well as that of Oromasdes,
though we have only the authority of Diogenes Laer-
tius (Prooem. c. 8) for it. Later writers, both Greek
and Roman, are well acquainted with both names.

I mention all this chiefly in order to show that there
are signs of historical growth and historical decay in
the various portions of what we call Avestic literature.
If with Dr- Haug we place the earliest G&tha literature
in about 1000 to 1200 B.C., which of course is a purely
hypothetical date, we can say at all events that the
Gathas are in thought, if not in language also, older
than the inscriptions of Darius; that they belonged to
Media, and existed there probably before the time of
Cyrus and his conquest of the Persian empire.

When we come to the time of Alexander, we see
1 Angra occurs in the Gathas in the sense of evil.

LECTUEE II.

that there existed then so large an amount of sacred
literature, that we cannot be far wrong in ascribing
the whole of the twenty-one Nasks to a proAehae-
inenian period, before 500 B.C. Here we can dis-
tinguish again between the old and the later Yasna.
The Vendidad, Yispered, the Yashts, and the smaller
prayers may be ascribed to the end of the Avestic
period. Dr. Haug places the larger portion of the
original Vendidad at about 1000-900 b. c., the com-
position of the later Yasna at about 800-700 B.C.

The Pehlevi literature may have begun soon after
Alexander. Linguistic chronology is, no doubt, of a
very uncertain character. Still, that there is an his-
torical progress both in language and thought from the
Gathas to the Yasna, and from the Yasna to the Yashts,
can hardly be doubted. Eeal historical dates are unfor-
tunately absent, except the mention of Gaotama in the
Fravardin Yasht (16). If this is meant for Gautama,
the founder of Buddhism, we can hardly be wrong in
supposing that this name of Buddha had reached
Bactria during the first century after Buddha s death,
say 477-377 b.c. In later times the presence of
Buddhists in Bactria cannot be doubted \ About the
same time coins had been struck with inscriptions in
Pehlevi, which must have been the language of the

1 The presence of Buddhists in Bactria in the first century b. c.
is attested by several authorities. Alexander Polyhistor, who wrote
between 80-60 b.c. (as quoted by Cyrillus contra Julian.), mentions
among philosophers the Samanyioi among the Persian Bactrians,
the Magoi among the Persians, and the Gymnosophisis among tho
Indians. These Samanyioi were moant for Buddhists. Later still
Clemens of Alexandria, Strom, i.p, 859, speaks of Samanaioi among
the Bactnans and of Gymnosophists among the Indians, while Buse-
bius (Praep. Ev. vii. 10) speaks of thousands of Brahmans among
Indians and Bactrians. See Lassen, Ind. Alterthufmkunde , ii. p. 1075 1
Spiegel, Eran* Alterthumskunde. i , 671.

THE TKUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 47

people about the time of Alexander’s conquests. The
Avestic language, however, continued to he under-
stood for a long time after, so that, under the Parthian
and the Sassanian dynasties, interpreters could be
found, able to translate and explain the ancient sacred
texts. Nay, if M. Darmesteter is right, additions in
Avestic continued to be made as late as the fourth
century A. D., provided that the passages which he has
pointed out in the Vendid&d refer to the suppression
of the heresy of Mani by king Shahpftr II.

Tlie Relation between the Avesta and the Old Testament.

I thought it necessary to enter thus fully into the
history of the rise and decline of the sacred literature
of Persia, because I wanted to show how impossible it
is to institute a satisfactory comparison between the
Persian and any other religion, unless we are fully
aware of the historical growth of its sacred canon.
Though much light had been shed on this subject by
Dr. Haug, it is but lately that the valuable translation
of the Dinkard!, contributed by Mr. West to my Sacred
Books of the East , has enabled us to form an indepen-
dent judgment on that subject. The Persian religion
has often been the subject of comparison both with
the religion of India and with that of the Jews, par-
ticularly after their return from the exile. The chief
doctrines which the Jews are supposed to have bor-
rowed from the followers of Zoroaster are a belief in
the resurrection of the body, a belief in the immor-
tality of the soul, and a belief in future rewards and
punishments. It is well known that these doctrines
- were entirely, or almost entirely, absent from the oldest
phase of religion among the J ews, so that their presence

LECTURE II.

in some of the Psalms and the Prophets has often
been used as an argument in support of the later date
now assigned to these compositions. Here there are no
chronological difficulties. These doctrines exist, as we
shall see, at least in their germinal stage, in the Gathas,
while of the more minute details added to these old
doctrines in the later portions of the Avesta, or in the
still later Pehlevi writings, there is no trace even in
post-exilic books of the Old Testament. This point
has been well argued by Prof. Cheyne in the Exposi-
tory Times , June, July, August, 1891 h

But there is another point on which we can observe
an even more striking similarity between the Old Testa-
ment and the Avesta, namely, the strong assertion of
the oneness of God. Here, however, it seems to me
that, if there was any exchange of thought between
the followers of Moses and of Zoroaster, it may
have been the latter who were influenced. The sudden
change from the henotheism of the Veda to the mono-
theism of the Avesta has never been accounted for, and
I venture to suggest, though not without hesitation,
that it may have taken place in Media, in the original
home of the Zoroastrian religion. It was in the cities of
Media that a large Jewish population w r a,s settled, after
the king of Assyria had carried away Israel, and put
them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan,
and in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings xviii. 11).
Now, however difficult an exchange of religious ideas
may be between people speaking different languages,
the fact of their worshipping either one God or many
gods could hardly fail to attract attention. If then the

1 On Possible Zoroastrian Influences on the Religion of Israel See also
Spiegel, Evanische AUerthumskunde, rol. i. pp. 446 seq. I am not con*
vinced by Prof. Cheyne's remarks in the Academy, July, 1893, p. 44.

THE TRUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 49

Jews impressed their neighbours with the conviction
that there could be but one God, a conviction which
in spite of many backslidings, seems never to have
ceased altogether to form part of the national faith of
Israel, everything else would naturally have followed,
exactly as we find it in the Avesta, as compared
with the Veda. One of the ancient gods, the Asura
Varum, was taken as the one and supreme God,
the God above all gods, under the name of Ahura
Mazda ; the other Devas, if they claimed to be gods,
were renounced, and those only who could be treated
as secondary spirits, were allowed to remain, nay,
were increased in number by such spirits or angels
as Ameretat, Haurvatat, Vohumano, and all the rest.

I am far from saying that this can be strictly proved.
Neither can it be proved that the belief in a resurrec-
tion and immortality was necessarily borrowed by the
Jews from the Zoroastrians. For, after all, people
who deny the immortality of the soul, can also assert
it. All I say is that such a supposition being his-
torically possible, would help to explain many things
in the Avesta and its development out of Vedic or
pre-Vedic elements, that have not yet any satisfactory
explanation.

I am that I am.

But there is a still more startling coincidence.
You may remember that the highest expression of
this Supreme Being that was reached in India, was
one found in the Vedic hymns, fi He who above all gods
is the only God/ I doubt whether Physical Religion
can reach a higher level. We must remember that
each individual god had from the first been invested
(4) E

LECTUEE II.

with a character high above any human character.
Indra, Soma, Agni, and whatever other Devas there
were in the Vedic Pantheon, had been described as
the creators of the world, as the guardians of what
is good and right, as all-powerful, all-wise, and
victorious over all their enemies. What more then
could human language and religious devotion achieve
than to speak of one Supreme Being, high above all
these gods, and alone worthy of the name of God ?

We saw that in Greece also a similar exalted con-
ception of the true God had at a very early time found
expression in a verse of Xenophanes, who in the face
of Zeus, and Apollo, and Athene ventured to say,
‘There is but one God, the lest among mortals and
immortals, neither in form nor in thought, like unto
mortals .’ This again seems to me to mark the highest
altitude which human language can reach in its desire
to give an adequate description of the one true God.
For though the existence of other immortals is
admitted, yet He is supposed to hold his own pre-
eminent position among or above them, and even a
similarity with anything human, whether in shape or
thought, is distinctly denied, thus excluding all those
anthropomorphic conceptions from which even in the
best of religions the Deity seems unable altogether to
divest itself. The Hebrew Psalmist uses the same
exalted language about Jehovah. 1 Among the gods,’
he says, as if admitting the possibility of other gods,

‘ there is none like unto Thee.’ And again he calls
Jehovah, the great King above all gods, using almost
the same expressions as the Vedic Kishi and the old
Greek philosopher. The conception of the Supreme
Being as we find it in the Avesta, is by no means

THE TRUE VALUE OP THE SACRED BOOKS. 51

inferior to that of Jehovah in the Old Tes tam ent.
Dr. Haug (Essays, p. 302) goes so far as to say that
it is perfectly identical. Ahura Mazda is called by
Zarathushtra ‘the Creator of the earthly and spiritual
life, the Lord of the whole universe, in whose hands
are all creatures. He is the light and the source of
light; he is the wisdom and intellect. He is in
possession of all good things, spiritual and worldly,
such as the good mind (vohu-mano), immortality
(ameretacZ), health (haurvatad), the best truth (asha
vahishta), devotion and piety (armaiti), and abundance
of earthly goods (khshathra vairya), that is to say, he
grants all these gifts to the righteous man, who is
upright in thoughts, words, and deeds. As the ruler
of the whole universe, he not only rewards the good,
but he is a punisher of the wicked at the same time.
All that is created, good or evil, fortune or misf ortune,
is his work. A separate evil spirit of equal power
with Ahura Mazda, and always opposed to him, is
foreign to the earlier portions of the Avesta, though
the existence of such a belief among the Zoroastrians
may be gathered from some of the later writings, such
as the Yendidad.’

Coincidences such as these are certainly startling,
but to a student of comparative theology they only
prove the universality of truth; they necessitate by
no means the admission of a common historical origin
or the borrowing on one side or the other. We ought
in fact rejoice that with regard to these fundamental
truths the so-called heathen religions are on a perfect
level with the Jewish and the Christian religions.

But suppose we found the same name, the same
proper name of the Deity, say Jehovah in the Avesta,

LECTURE II.

or Ahura Mazda in the Old Testament, what should
we say? We should at once have to admit a borrowing
on one side or the other. Now it is true we do not
find the name of Ahura Mazda in the Old Testament,
but we find something equally surprising. Y ou may
remember how we rejoiced when in the midst of many
imperfect and more or less anthropomorphic names
given to the deity in the Old Testament, we suddenly
were met by that sublime and exalted name of
Jehovah, c I am that I am/ It seemed so different
from the ordinary concepts of deity among the ancient
J ews. What then should we say, if we met with exactly
the same most abstract appellation of the deity in the
A vesta? Yet, in the Avesta also there is among the
twenty sacred names of God, the name * All mi ya t
ah mi, 5 4 1 am that I am/ Shall wo read in this co-
incidence also the old lesson that God has revealed
Himself to all who feel after Him, if haply they may
find Him, or is the coincidence so minute that we have
to admit an actual borrowing? And if so, on which
side is the borrowing likely to have taken place ? In
the Avesta this name occurs in the Yashts. In the
Old Testament it occurs in Exodus ill. 13. Chrono-
logically therefore the Hebrew text is anterior to the
Avestic text. In Exodus we read :

‘And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come
unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them,
The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you ; and
they shall say to me, What is his name ? what shall
I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, / am
that I am: and he said. Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you/

This passage, as I am informed by the best author!-

THE TRUE VALUE OE THE SACRED BOOKS. 53

ties, is now unanimously referred to the Elohistie
section. Dillmann, Driver, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Cor-
nill, Kittel, &c., all agree on that point. But does it
not look like a foreign thought ? What we expect as
the answer to the question of Moses, is really what
follows in ver. 15, £ And God said [moreover] unto
Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel,
Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob hath sent me
unto you ; this is my name for ever. . . / This is what
we expect, for it was actually in the name of Jehovah,
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that Moses
brought the people out of Egypt; nor is there any
trace of Moses having obeyed the divine command
and having appealed to 4 1 am that I am,’ as the God
who sent him. Nay, there is never again any allusion
to such a name in the Old Testament, not even where
we might fully expect to meet with it.

If we take ver. 14 as a later addition, and the
Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter informs me that this is
quite possible, in the Elohistie narrative, everything
becomes clear and natural, and we can hardly doubt
therefore that this addition came from an extraneous,
and most likely from a Zoroastrian source. In Zend
the connection between Ahura , the living god, and ■
the verb ah> to be, might have been felt. In Sanskrit
also the connection between asura and as, to be, could
hardly have escaped attention, particularly as there
was also the word as-u, breath. Now it is certainly
very strange that in Hebrew also ehyeh seems to
point to the same root as Jehovah , but even if this
etymology were tenable historically, it does not seem
to have struck the Jewish mind except in this passage.

LECTUEE II.

But let us look now more carefully at our autho-
rities in Zend. The passage in question occurs in the
Ormazd Yasht, and the Yashts, as we saw, were some
of the latest productions of Avestic literature, in some
cases as late as the fourth century B. a. The Elohistic
writer, therefore, who is supposed to be not later than
750 b.c., could not have borrowed from that Yasht.
The interpolator, however, might have done so. Be-
sides we must remember that this Ormazd Yasht is
simply an enumeration of the names of Ahura. The
twenty names of Ahura are given, in order to show
their efficacy as a defence against all dangers. It
cannot be doubted, therefore, that these names were
recognised as sacred names, and that they had
existed long before the time of their compilation. I
shall subjoin the translation of the introductory para-
graphs from the 3. B. E. y vol. xxiii. p. 23 :

Zarathushtra asked Ahura Mazda: c O Ahura Mazda,
most beneficent Spirit, Maker of the material world,
thou Holy One, what Holy Word is the strongest?
What is the most victorious? What is the most
glorious? What is the most effective? What is
the most fiend-smiting? What is the best-healing?
What destroyeth best the malice of Daevas and men ?
What maketh the material world best come to the
fulfilment of its wishes? What freeth the material
world best from the anxieties of the heart?* Ahura
Mazda answered : c Our name, 0 Spitama Zara-
thushtra, who are the Amesliaspentas, that is the
strongest part of the Holy Word, that is the most
victorious, that is the most glorious, that in the most
effective,’ &c.

Then Zarathushtra said : * Reveal unto me that name

THE TKUE VALUE OF THE SACKED BOOKS. 55

of thine, 0 Ahura Mazda ! that is the greatest, the best,
the fairest, the most effective, 5 &c.

Ahura Mazda replied unto him : ‘My name is the One
of whom questions are asked, 0 Holy Zarathushtra ! 5

How it is curious to observe that Dr. Haug trans-
lates the same passage freely, but not accurately, by :
£ The first name is Ahmi, I am. 5

The text is Frakhshtya nama ahmi, and this
means, £ One to be asked by name am 1/ £ To ask 5

is the recognised term for asking for revealed truth, so
that spento frasna, the holy question, including the
answer, came to mean with the Parsis almost the same
as revelation. Dr. Haug seems to have overlooked
that word, and his translation has therefore been
•wrongly quoted as showing that I am was a name of
Ahura Mazda.

But when we come to the twentieth name we find
that Haug’s translation is more accurate than Darme-
steters. The text is visastemo ahmi ya t ahmi
Mazdau n&ma. This means, £ the twentieth, I am
what I am, Mazda by name.’ Here Darmesteter
translates : c My twentieth name is Mazda (the all-
knowing one), 5 Dr. Haug more accurately: e Tk&
twentieth (name is) I am who I am, Mazda 1 . 5

Here then in this twentieth name of Ahura Mazda,
£ I am that I am/ we have probably the source of the
verse in Exodus iii. 14, unless we are prepared to

1 Another translation of the words visastemb ahmi ya t ahmi
Mazdau n&ma has been suggested by West. Ahmi in Zend, he
writes, is not only the same as Sk. as mi, I am, but is used also
as the locative of the first personal pronoun, corresponding to the
Sk. mayi. It is possible, therefore, to translate ‘the twentieth
name for me is that I am Mazda/ though most scholars would
prefer to take the two ahmi’s for the same, and to translate, ‘iho
twentieth is I am what I am, Mazda by name.’

LECTUBE II.

admit a most extraordinary coincidence, and that
under circumstances where a mutual influence, nay
actual borrowing, was far from difficult, and where
the character of the passage in Exodus seems to give
clear indication on which side the borrowing must
have taken place.

I hope I have thus made it clear in what the real
value of the Sacred Books of the East consists with
regard to a comparative study of religions. We must
freely admit that many literary documents in which
we might have hoped to find the traces of the earliest
growth of a religion, are lost to us for ever. I have
tried to show how, more particularly in the case of
the Zoroastrian religion, our loss has boon very
great, and the recent publication of the Dinkani by
Mr. E. W. West (S. jB. E vol. xxxvii) has made us realise
more fully how much of the most valuable information
is lost to us for ever. We read, for instance (Book ix.
cap. 31, 13), that in the Varstmansar Na.sk there was
a chapter on ‘ the arising of the spiritual creation, the
first thought of Auharmazd ; and, as to the creatures
of Affharma^cZ, first the spiritual achievement, and
then the material formation and the mingling of
spirit with matter ; [the advancement of the creatures
thereby, through his wisdom and the righteousness
of Vohuman being lodged in the creatures,] and all
the good creatures being goaded thereby into purity
and joyfulness. This too, that a complete under-
standing of things arises through Voh&man having
made a home in one’s reason (virdm)f

To have seen the full treatment of these questions
in the Avesta would have been of the greatest value
to the students of the history of religions, whether

THE TEUE 'VALUE OF THE SACKED BOOKS. 57

they admit a direct influence of Persian on Jewish and
Christian thought, or whether they look upon the
Zoroastrian idea of a spiritual followed by a material
creation as simply an instructive parallel to the
Philonic concept of the Logos, its realisation in the
material world, or the crapg, and on Vohuman as a
parallel to the Holy Ghost. But there is now no hope
of our ever recovering what has been lost so long. We
must admit, therefore, that, with all the Sacred Books
of the East, our knowledge of ancient religions will
always remain very imperfect, and that we are often
forced to depend on writings, the date of which
as writings is very late, if compared with the times
which they profess to describe. It does not follow
that there may not be ancient relics imbedded in
modern books, but it does follow that these modem
books have to be used with great caution, also that
their translation can never be too literal. There is a
dangerous tendency in Oriental scholarship, namely
an almost unconscious inclination to translate certain
passages in the Veda, the Zend Avesta, or the Buddhist
Canon into language taken from the Old or New Testa-
ment. In some respects this may be useful, as it brings
the meaning of such passages nearer to us. But there is
a danger also, for such translations are apt to produce
an impression that the likeness is greater than it really
is, so great in fact that it could be accounted for by
actual borrowing only. It is right that we should try
to bring Eastern thought and language as near as
possible to our own thought and language, but we must
be careful also not to obliterate the minute features
peculiar to each, even though the English translation
may sometimes sound strange and unidiomatic.

LECTURE III.

THE HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS
AND PHILOSOPHIES.

How to compare Ancient Eeligions ana Ancient Eliilosophies.

W E saw in the case of the Avesta how absolutely
necessary it is that we should have formed to
ourselves a clear conception of the relation in which
the religions and philosophies of the ancient world
stand to each other before we venture to compare
them.

In former days, when little was known of the more
distant degrees of relationship by which the historical
nations of the world were bound together, the tempta-
tion was great, whenever some similarity was pointed
out between the beliefs of different nations, to suppose
that one had borrowed from the other. Tho Greeks,
as we saw, actually persuaded themselves that they
had borrowed the names of some of their gods from
Egypt, because they discovered a certain similarity
between their own deities and those of that ancient
country. But we know now that there was no
foundation whatever for such an opinion. Christian
theologians, from the days of Clement of Alexandria to
our own time, were convinced that any startling coin-

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 59

cidences between the Bible and the Sacred Books of
other religions could be due to one cause only, namely,
to borrowing on the part of the Gentiles ; while there
were not wanting Greek philosophers who accused
Christian teachers of having taken their best doctrines
from Plato and Aristotle.

Common Humanity.

We must therefore, at the very outset, try to clear
our mind on this subject. We may distinguish, I
believe, between four different kinds of relationship.
The most distant relationship is that which is simply
due to our common humanity. Homines sunius, nihil
Immani a nobis alienum patamus. Much of what
is possible in the Arctic regions is possible in the
Antarctic regions also; and nothing can be more
interesting than when we succeed in discovering co-
incidences between beliefs, superstitions, and customs,
peculiar to nations entirely separated from each other,
and sharing nothing but their common humanity.
Such beliefs, superstitions, and customs possess a
peculiar importance in the eye of the psychologist,
because, unless we extend the chapter of accidents
very far indeed, they can hardly be deprived of a
claim of being founded in human nature, and, in that
case, of being, if not true, at all events, humanly
speaking, legitimate. It is true that it has been
found very difficult to prove any belief or any custom
to be quite universal. Speech, no doubt, and, in one
sense, certain processes of grammar too, a conception
of number and an acceptance of certain numerals, may
be called universal ; a belief in gods or supernatural
powers is almost universal, and so is a sense of shame

LECTURE III.

■with regard to sex, and a more or less accurate obser-
vation of the changes of the moon and the seasons
of the year.

But there is one point which, as anthropologists,
we ought never to forget. We gain nothing, or very
little, by simply collecting similar superstitions or
similar customs among different and widely distant
nations. This amounts to little more than if, as com-
parative philologists, we discover that to be in love is
in French amoureux and in Mandshu in Northern
China amowrou. This is curious, but nothing more.
Or, if we compare customs, it is well known that a
very strange custom, the so-called Couvade , has been
discovered among different nations, both in ancient
and modern times. It consists, as you know, in the
father being put to bed when the mother has given
birth to a child. But, besides the general likeness of
the custom, which is certainly very extraordinary, its
local varieties ought to have been far more carefully
studied than they hitherto have been. In some cases
it seems that the husband is most considerately nursed
and attended to, in others he is simply kept quiet and
prevented from making a noise in the house. In
other countries, again, quite a new element comes in.
The poor father is treated with the greatest malignity
— is actually flogged by the female members of Ins
household, and treated as a great criminal. Until we
can discover the real motive of those strange varieties
of the same custom, the mere fact that they have
been met with in many places is no more than
curious. It has no more scientific value than the
coincidence between the French amoureux and the
Mandshu amourou. Or, to take another instance,

ANCIENT KELIGTONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 61

the mere fact that the Sanskrit Haritas is letter by
letter the same word as the Greek Charites , teaches
us nothing. It is only when we are able to show
why the Hciritas in India and the Charites in Greece
received the same name, that these outward similar-
ities gain a truly scientific value. To say that some-
thing like the Couvade existed till very lately in
Spain and likewise in China explains nothing, or
only explains ignotum per ignotius. Not till we can
discover the common motive of a custom or a super-
stition, founded in our common humanity, can we
claim for these studies the name of Anthropology, can
we speak of a real Science of Man x .

Common Language.

The second kind of relationship is that of a common
language. Most people would think that community
of blood was a stronger bond than community of
language. But no one has ever defined what is meant
by blood ; it is generally used as a mere metaphor ;
and there remains in most cases the difficulty, or I
should rather say the impossibility, of proving either
the purity or the mixture of blood in the most ancient
periods of man’s existence on earth. Lastly, when we
are concerned with beliefs and customs, it is after all
the intellect that tells and not the blood. Now the
outward or material form of the intellect is language,
and when we have to deal with nations who belong
to the same family of language, Semitic or Aryan or
Polynesian, we ought , to be prepared for similarities
in their customs, in their religions, nay in their philo-
sophical expressions also.

1 On the Coitvade see Academy 1892, Nos. 1059, 1072, 1075.

LECTURE III.

Common History-

Thirdly, there is what I should call a real historical
relationship, as when nations, whether speaking related
or unrelated languages, have boon living together for
a certain time before they became politically separated.
The inhabitants of Iceland, for instance, not only speak
a dialect closely connected with the Scandinavian
languages, but they actually passed through the early
periods of their history under the same political sway
as the people of Norway. Common customs, there-
fore, found in Iceland and Norway admit of an his-
torical explanation. The same applies to existing
American customs as compared- with earlier English
or Irish customs.

Common :Weiglt!joTirlioo&.

Different from these three relationships is that of
mere neighbourhood which may lead to a borrowing
of certain things ready made on one side or the other,
very different from a sharing in a common ancestral
property. We know how much the Fins, for instance,
have borrowed from their Scandinavian neighbours in
customs, legends, religion, and language. It happens
not unfrequently that two, if not three, of these rela-
tionships exist at the same time. Thus, if we take
the Semitic and the Aryan religions, any coincidences
between them can be due to their common humanity
only, except in cases where we can prove at a later
time historical contact between an Aryan and a
Semitic race. No one can doubt that the Pkenicians
were the schoolmasters, or at least the writing masters,
of the Greeks ; also that in several parts of the world

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES, 63

Greeks and Phenicians were brought into close rela-
tions by commercial intercourse. Hence we can
account by mere borrowing for the existence of
Semitic names, such as Melikertes in Greek mytho-
logy; likewise for the grafting of Semitic ideas on
Greek deities, as in the case of Aphrodite or Heracles.
No Greek scholar, however, would suppose that the
Greeks had actually borrowed their original concept
and name of Aphrodite or Heracles from Semitic
sources, though the grafting of Semitic ideas on Greek
stems may have led in certain cases to a complete
transfusion of Semitic thought into Greek forms.
Generally the form of a name, and the phonetic laws
which determine the general character of Semitic
and Aryan words, are sufficient to enable us to decide
who was the borrower and who was the lender in
these exchanges ; still, there are some cases where for
the present we are left in doubt.

Though no satisfactory Aryan etymology of Aphro-
dite has yet been discovered, yet no one would claim
a Semitic origin for such a word, as little as one would
claim a Greek etymology for Melikertes. It is dis-
appointing when we see the old idea of deriving Greek
mythological names straight from Hebrew, not even
from Phenician, revived and countenanced by so
respected a Journal as the Jalirbucher fur classische
PMLologie . In the volume for 1892, pp. 177 seq., an
article is published in which Dr. Heinrich Lewy derives
Elysion from ’Elisha, one of the four sons of Javan
(Gen. x. 4), and supposed to be a representative of
Sicily and Lower Italy 1 . Suppose it were so, are we to

1 The Sirens are supposed by Dr. Lewy to have derived their
name from Shir-chen, song of favour; Eileithyias from chilith,

LECTUEE ITL

believe that not only the Greeks, but other Aryan
nations also, derived their belief in the West, as the
abode of the Blessed, inHesperia and the MaK&ptav njw,
from the Jews ? I do not mean to say that we have
a satisfactory etymology of Elysion in Greek; all 1
say is, that there is nothing to suggest a foreign origin.
Elysion seems to be connected with the Greek >}A vO
in tfXvdov, TTpoor-rjXvTos, and with Sk. rub, to rise and to
move. In Sk. we have both a-ruh, to mount, and
ava-ruh, to descend. We actually find Ev. I. 52, 9.
roh ainm di vaA, the ascent or summit of heaven, and
Rv. I 105, 11, maclhye arodhane diva//, where, if
we could take rudh for ruh, we should have a strong
analogy of an Elysion, as a heavenly abode ; while in
IX. 113, 8, avarddhanam divdA is another expres-
sion for the abode of the blessed. The Greek ?]Amrmr
would stand for rjXvd-TLov 1 .

We saw in our last lecture that if there are any coin-
cidences between the ancient philosophy of the Greeks
and that of the Brahmans, they should be accounted
for by their common humanity only. In some cases
we may perhaps appeal to the original community
of language between Brahman and Greek, for laimmuw

3 to *

travails of birth ; Upis in Artemis Upis from chOphith, tho goddo-n
of ehaph, seashore; (ken from Hebrew chOlSni, a sow- ;
pte from ’Eiraphon, tho El of healing; Sa m ,!m from Zar-
pad On, the rock of rescue; Europe from ’Ariihhft, (ho darkened;
Minos from M Sue, tho ordaincr; Radcmumthys from ROdAomoth
nilmg in truth ; Admstcin from DOroshoth, requiring vengeance';
Endymon from ’En dimyon, non-do.struction ; Kronas from Uftrdn
the jaws; Orion from 0 r a r i ’ 6 n, tho hurlor of strength, or, as wo
are now told, from tho Accadinn Ur- ana, light of hoa wLTaZ
naeum June 25, 1892, p 810) ; AM* f rom hH-iyyohlu' Z com.
pkunt c>f tho persecuted ; Apollon, Etruscan Aplun from AbJu, the
son. What should wo say to such derivations, if they were from
Sanskrit, and not from Hebrew ? y

1 So© Eick in K. Z., xix, note.

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES.

forms a kind of inclined plane determining the general
direction or inclination of any intellectual structure
erected upon it. Communication, however, or ex-
change in historical times seems here, so far as we can
judge, to be entirely out of the question.

delation between tbe Religions of India and Persia.

If on the contrary we compare the ancient religious
and philosophical ideas of India with those of Persia,
we have to admit not only what may be called an under-
tying community of language, but an historical com-
munity between the ancestors of Indians and Persians,
that lasted long after the other Aryan nations had been
finally separated. The mere occurrence of such technical
names, for instance, as zaotar , the title of the supreme
priest, the Vedic hotar, or atharvan, fire-priest, the
Sanskrit ^thar van, or of hctoma , name of a plant used
for sacrificial purposes both in the Veda and in the
Avesta, while no trace of them occurs in any of the
other Aryan languages, are sufficient to show that the
believers in the Veda and the believers in the Avesta
remained socially united up to a time when a minute
sacrificial ceremonial had been fully elaborated. Of a
later borrowing between the two, except in quite
modern times, there is no evidence whatever.

A comparison of the ancient Indian and Persian
religions must therefore be of a totally different
character from a comparison of the earliest religious
and philosophical ideas in India and Greece. There
is the common deep-lying linguistic substratum in both
cases, but whereas the Greek and the Indian streams
of thought became completely separated before there
was any attempt at forming definite half-philosophical
half-religious concepts, the Indian and Persian streams

(4) F

LECTURE III.

of thought continued running in the same bed, long
after the point had been reached where the Greek
stream had separated from them.

That being the case, it follows that any coincidences
that may be discovered between the later phases of
religious or philosophical thought of Greeks and
Hindus, should not be accounted for by any historical
contact, while coincidences between Indian and Persian
thought, whether religious or philosophical, admit of
such an explanation.

Independent Character of Indian Philosophy*

This, from one point of view, may seem disappoint-
ing. But it lends a new charm to the study of Indian
philosophy, as compared with the philosophy of Greece
— because we can really recognise in it what may be
called a totally independent venture of the human mind.

The discovery of a rich philosophical literature in
India has never attracted as yet the attention which
it deserves. Most of our philosophers cannot get over
the idea that there is one way only of treating
philosophy, namely that which was followed in
Greece and was afterwards adopted by most of the
philosophers of Europe. Nearly all our philosophical
terminology comes to us from Greece, hut without
wishing to say a word against its excellence, we
ought not to look upon every other philosophy that
does not conform to our own formulas, as unworthy
of serious attention.

I shall try therefore to bring this Indian philosophy,
and more particularly the V ed&nta philosophy, as
near as I can to our own sphere of philosophical
interests. I shall try to show that it treats the same

ANCIENT BELIGTONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 67

problems which have occupied the thoughts of Greek
philosophers, nay, which occupy our own thoughts,
though it treats them in a way that at first sight may
seem to us strange or even repellent. This very
strangeness, however, exercises its own peculiar attrac-
tion, for whatever we possess of philosophy, whether it
comes from Greece or Italy or Germany, or now from
America and the most distant colonies, has been touched
directly or indirectly by the rays of those great lumin-
aries that arose in Greece in the fifth century B.c.
In India alone philosophy was never, so far as we
know, touched by any external influences. It sprang
up there spontaneously as it did in Greece, and if the
thinkers of Greece strike us as a marvel, because we
know nothing like them in any other part of the
world, we are filled with the same surprise, if we
meet with complete systems of philosophy south of
the Himalayan mountains, in a country where, till
it was subdued by nations, superior to the inhabitants
of India in physical strength and military organisation,
though by no means in intellectual vigour or origin-
ality, religion and philosophy seem to have formed
during centuries the one absorbing subject of medita-
tion. If we form our notion of the ancient Aryan
settlers in India from what they have left us in their
literature, no doubt we have to remember that nearly
all we have comes from one source, or has passed
through one channel, that of the Brahmans. There
is therefore no doubt some danger that we maydraw
too bright, too ideal a picture of these Indian Aryas,
as if they had been a nation consisting entirely of
pious worshippers of the gods, and of philosophers
bent on solving the great problems of this life and of
the realities that lie behind it, or beneath it. There

LECTURE III.

must have been dark sides to their life also, and we
catch glimpses of them even in their own sacred litera-
ture. But these darker sides of human life we can
study everywhere ; — what we can study nowhere but
in India is the all-absorbing influence which religion
and philosophy may exercise on the human mind. So
far as we can judge, a large class of people in India,
not only the priestly class, but the nobility also,
not only men but women also, never looked upon
their life on earth as something real. What was
real to them was the invisible, the life to come.
What formed the theme of their conversations, what
formed the subject of their meditations, was the real
that alone lent some kind of reality to this unreal
phenomenal world. Whoever was supposed to have
caught a new ray of truth was visited by young and
old, was honoured by princes and kings, nay, was
looked upon as holding a position far above that of
kings and princes. That is the side of the life of
ancient India which deserves our study, because there
has been nothing like it in the whole w T orld, not even
in Greece or in Palestine.

The Indian View of Xdfe.

Our idea of life on earth has always been that of
a struggle for existence, a struggle for power and
dominion, for wealth and enjoyment. Those aro the
ideas which dominate the history of all nations whose
history is known to us. Our own sympathies also are
almost entirely on that side. But was man placed on
this earth for that one purpose only ? Can wo not
imagine a different purpose, particularly under condi-
tions such as existed for many eenturidrin India and

ANCIENT KELIGTONS AND PHILOSOPHIES.

nowhere else ? In India the necessaries of life were
few, and those which existed were supplied without
much exertion on the part of man. by a bountiful nature.
Clothing, scanty as it was, was easily provided. Life
in the open air or in the shades of the forest was more
delightful than life in cottages or palaces. The danger
of inroads from foreign countries was never dreamt
of before the time of Darius and Alexander, and then
on one side only, on the north, while more than a silver
streak protected all around the far-stretching shores
of the country. Why should the ancient inhabitants of
India not have accepted their lot ? Was it so very un-
natural for them, endowed as they were with a tran-
scendent intellect, to look upon this life, not as an arena
for gladiatorial strife and combat, or as a market for
cheating and huckstering, but as a resting-place, a mere
waiting-room at a station on a journey leading them
from the known to the unknown, but exciting for that
very reason their utmost curiosity as to whence they
came, and whither they were going. I know quite well
that there never can be a whole nation of philosophers
or metaphysical dreamers. The pleasures of life and
sensual enjoyments would in India as elsewhere dull the
intellect of the many, and make them satisfied with a
mere animal existence, not exempt from those struggles
of envy and hatred which men share in common with
the beasts. But the ideal life which we find reflected
in the ancient literature of India, must certainly have
been lived by at least the few, and we must never
forget that, all through history, it is the few, not the
many, who impress their character on a nation, and
have a right to represent it, as a whole. What do we
know of Greece at the time of the Ionian and Eleatic

LECTURE III.

philosophers, except the utterances of Seven Sages ?
What do we know of the Jews at the time of Moses,
except the traditions preserved in the Laws and the
Prophets ? It is the Prophets, the poets, the lawgivers
and teachers, however small their number, who speak
in the name of the people, and who alone stand out
to represent the nondescript multitude behind them, to
speak their thoughts and to express their sentiments.

I confess it has always seemed to me one of the sad-
dest chapters in the history of the world to see the early
inhabitants of India who knew nothing of the rest of the
world, of the mighty empires of Egypt and Babylon, of
their wars and conquests, who wanted nothing from
the outside world, and were happy and content in their
own earthly paradise, protected as it seemed by the
mountain ramparts in the north, and watched on every
other side by the jealous waves of the Indian ocean, to
see these happy people suddenly overrun by foreign
warriors, whether Persians, Greeks or Macedonians, or
at a later time, Scythians, Mohammedans, Mongolians,
and Christians, and conquered for no fault of theirs,
except that they had neglected to cultivate the art of
killing their neighbours. They themselves never
wished for conquests, they simply wished to be left
alone, and to be allowed to work out their view
of life which was contemplative and joyful, though
deficient in one point, namely the art of self-defence
and destruction. They had no idea that a tempest
could break upon them, and when tho black clouds
came suddenly driving across the northern and western
mountain-passes, they had no shelter, they were simply
borne down by superior brute force. They remind us
of Archimedes imploring the cruel invader, not to dis-

ANCIENT BELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 71

turb his philosophical circles, but there was no help
for them. That ideal of human life which they had
pictured to themselves, and which to a certain extent
they seemed to have realised before they were dis-
covered and disturbed by the 4 outer barbarians,’ had
to be surrendered. It was not to be, the whole world
was to be a fighting and a huckstering world, and
even the solution of the highest problems of religion
and philosophy was in future to be determined* not
by sweet reasonableness, but by the biggest battalions.
We must all learn that lesson, but even to the hardened
historian it is a sad lesson to learn.

But it may be said, What then are these dreamers
to us? We have to learn our lessons of life from
Greeks and Romans. They are our light and our
leaders. The blood that runs in our veins is the blood
of vigorous Saxons and Normans, not of the pensive
gymnosophists of India.

True, and yet these pensive gymnosophists are not
entire strangers to us. Whatever the blood may be
that runs through our veins, the blood that runs
through our thoughts, I mean our language, is the
same as that of the Aryas of India, and that language
has more to do with ourselves than the blood that
feeds our body and keeps us alive for a time.

Iianguag'e, tHe Common Background of PMlosopky.

Let us therefore try, before we begin to compare the
philosophy of the Hindus with our own, or with that
of Greeks and Romans, to make it quite clear to our-
selves, first of all, whether there may be a common
foundation for both, or secondly whether we shall
have to admit a later historical contact between the

LECTUBE III.

philosophers of the East and those of the West, I
think people have learnt by this time to appreciate
how much we are dependent in all our thoughts on
our language, nay how much we are helped, and, of
course, hindered also by our language in all our
thoughts, and afterwards in the deeds that follow on
our thoughts. Still we must be careful and distin-
guish between two things, — the common stock of
words and thoughts which the Aryan nations shared
in common before they separated, and the systems of
thought which in later times they elaborated each on
their own soil. The common intellectual inheritance
of the Aryan nations is very considerable, — much
larger than was at one time, supposed. There are
sufficient words left which, as they are the same in
Greek and Sanskrit, must have existed before the
Aryan family broke up into two branches, the one
marching to the West and North, the other to the South
and East. It is possible with the help of these words
to determine the exact degree of what may be called
civilisation, which had been reached before the great
Aryan separation took place, thousands of years before
the beginning of any history. We know that the only
real historical background for the religion, the mytho-
logy and the laws of the Greeks and Romans has
been discovered in the fragments left to ue of the
common stock of words of the Aryan nations.

Common Aryan Religion and Mythology.

To treat of Greek religion, mythology, nay even of
legal customs without a consideration of their Aryan
antecedents, would be like treating of Italian without
a knowledge of Latin. This is now a very old truth,

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES.

though there are still, I believe, a few classical scholars
left, who are shocked at the idea that the Greek Zeus
could have anything to do with the Yedic Dyaus.
You know that there are some people who occasion-
ally publish a pamphlet to show that, after all, the
earth is not round, and who even offer prizes and
challenge astronomers to prove that it is round. It
is the same in Comparative Philology and Keligion.
There are still some troglodytes left who say that Zeus
may be derived from (f/v, to live, that Varava shows
no similarity to Ouranos, that deva, bright and god,
cannot be the Latin deus, that Varvara is not
Kerberos , and that Sarawyu cannot be Erinys .
To them Greek mythology is like a lotus swimming
on thd water without any stem, without any roots.
I am old enough to remember the time when the
y^orld was startled for the first time by the discovery
that the dark inhabitants of India should more than
three thousand years ago have called their gods by
the same names by which the Eomans and the
Eomanic nations called God and still call Him to the
present day. But the world has even been more
startled of late at the recrudescence of this old
classical prejudice, which looked upon an Aryan
origin of Greek thought and Greek language as
almost an insult to classical scholarship. One of the
greatest discoveries of our century, a discovery in
which men such as Humboldt, Bopp, Grimm and
Kuhn have gained their never-fading laurels, was
treated once more as schoolmasters would treat the
\]blunders of schoolboys, and that by men ignorant of
the rudiments of Sanskrit, ignorant of the very ele-
ments of Comparative Philology. I call it one of the

LECTURE III.

greatest discoveries of our age, for it has thrown light
on one of the darkest chapters in the history of the
world, it has helped us to understand some of the most
perplexing riddles in the growth of the human mind,
it has placed historical facts, where formerly we had
nothing but guesses as to the history of the Aryan
nations, previous to their appearance on the historical
stage of Asia and Europe.

I should not venture to say that some mistakes
have not been made in the reconstruction of the
picture of the Aryan civilisation previous to their
separation, or in identifying the names of certain
Greek and Vedic gods ; but such mistakes, as soon as
they were discovered, have easily been corrected.
Besides, we know that what were supposed to be
mistakes, were often no mistakes at all.. One of the
strongest arguments against a comparison of Greek
and Yedic deities has always been that the Greeks of
Homer s time, for instance, had no recollection that
Zeus was originally a name of the bright sky or
Erinys a name of the dawn. Nothing is so easy as
to disprove what no one has ever wished to prove.
No Frenchman is conscious that the name Spicier has
anything to do with species , and in the end, with
Plato's ideas; and yet we know that an unbroken
historical chain connects the two names. Mytho-
logical studies will never gain a safe scientific basis,
unless they are built up on the same common Aryan
foundation on which all linguistic studies are admitted
to rest. It is now the fashion to explain the similari-
ties between the religion, the mythology, the folklore
of the Aryan nations, not by their common origin, but
by our common humanity, not by historical evidence,

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 75

but by psychological speculation. It is perfectly true
that there are legends, stories, customs and proverbs
to be found among the South Sea Islanders and the
inhabitants of the Arctic regions which bear a*
striking likeness to those of the Aryan nations.
Many such had been collected long ago by anthro-
pologists such as Bastholm, Klemm, Waitz, and more
recently by Bastian, Tylor and others. I have myself
been one of the earliest labourers in this interesting
field of Psychological Mythology. But the question
is, What conclusions have we a right to draw from
such coincidences? First of all, we know by sad
experience how deceptive such apparent similarities
have often proved, for the simple reason that those
who collected them misunderstood their real import.
Secondly, we must never forget the old rule that if
two people say or do the same thing, it is not
always the same. But suppose the similarity is
complete and well made out, all we have a right to
say is that man, if placed under similar influences,
will sometimes react in the same manner. We have
no right as yet to speak of universal psychological
instincts, of innate ideas and all the rest. Psycho-
logical Mythology is a field that requires much more
careful cultivation than it has hitherto received.
Hitherto its materials have mostly proved untrust-
worthy, and its conclusions, in consequence, fanciful
and unstable.

We move in a totally different atmosphere when
we examine the legends, stories, customs and proverbs
of races who speak cognate languages. We have here
an historical background, we stand on a firm historical
foundation.

LECTURE III.

Charites = Haritas.

Let me give you one instance. I proposed many
years ago the mythological equation H aritas = C%on-
tes . All sorts of objections have been raised against
it, not one that I had not considered myself, before I
proposed it, not one that could for one moment shake
my conviction. If then the Sanskrit Haritas is the
same word, consonant by consonant and vowel by
vowel, as the Greek Gharites or Graces, have we not
a right to say that these two words must have had
the same historical beginning, and that however widely
the special meaning of the Greek Graces has diverged
from the special meaning of Haritas in Sanskrit,
these two diverging lines must have started from a
common centre? You know that in Sanskrit the
Haritas are the bright horses of the sun, while in
Greek the Gharites are the lovely companions of
Aphrodite. The common point from which these two
mythological conceptions have started must be dis-
covered and has been discovered in the fact that in
the Yeda Haritas meant originally the brilliant rays
of the rising sun. These in the language of the Vedic
poets became the horses of the sun-god, while in
Greek mythology they were conceived as beautiful
maidens attending on the orient sun, whether in its
male or its female character. If therefore we compare
the Vedic Haritas with the Greek Gharites, all we
mean is that they have both the same antecedents.
But when the Greek Charis becomes the wife of
Hephaistos, the smith, there is no longer any contact
here between Greek and Indian thought. This legend
has sprung from the soil of Greece, and those who

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 77

framed it had no recollection, however vague, of the
Vedic Haritas, the horses of the Vedic sun-god.

The later Growth. of Philosophy.

Now with regard to the early philosophy of the
Greeks no one would venture to say that, such as we
know it, it had been developed previous to the Aryan
separation. If I say, no one, this is perhaps too
strong, for how can we guard against occasional out-
breaks of hallucination, and what strait jacket is there
to prevent anybody who can drive a pen from rushing
into print? Only it is not fair to make a whole
school responsible for one or two black sheep. Greek
philosophy and Indian philosophy are products re-
spectively of the native soil of Greece and of India,
and to suppose that similarities such as have been dis-
covered between the Vedanta philosophy and that of
the Eleatic philosophers, between the belief in metem-
psychosis in the Upanishads and the same belief in
the schools of the Pythagoreans, were due to borrowing
or to common Aryan reminiscences, is simply to con-
found two totally distinct spheres of historical research.

Help derived by Philosophy from Language.

The utmost we can say is that there is an Aryan
atmosphere pervading both philosophies, different from
any Semitic atmosphere of thought, that there are
certain deep grooves of thought traced by Aryan
language in which the thoughts both of Indian and
Greek philosophers had necessarily to move. I shall
mention a few only. You know what an important
part the verbal copula acts in all philosophical opera-
tions. There are languages which have no verbal

LECTURE III.

copula, while the Aryan languages had their copula
ready made before they separated, the Sanskrit asti,
the Greek ia -n, the Latin esb, the Teutonic is b. The
relative pronoun too is of immense help for the close
concatenation of thought; so is the article, both definite
and indefinite. The relative pronoun had been ela-
borated before the Aryans separated, the definite
article existed at least in its rudimentary form. We
can hardly imagine any philosophical treatment with-
out the help of indicative and subjunctive, without
the employment of prepositions with their at first
local and temporal, but very soon, causal and modal
meanings also, without participles and infinitives,
without comparatives and superlatives. Think only
of the difficulty which the Romans experienced and
which we ourselves experience, in finding an equivalent
for such a participle as to ov, still more for the Greek
ovarba. Sanskrit has no such difficulty. It expresses
to w by sat, and oMa by sat-tva. All this forms
the common property of Greek and Sanskrit and the
other Aryan languages. There are many other in-
gredients of language which we accept as a matter of
course, but which, if we come to consider it, could
only have been the result of a long intellectual
elaboration. Such are, for instance, the formation of
abstract nouns. Without abstract nouns philosophy
would hardly deserve the name of philosophy, and we
are justified in saying that, as the suffixes by which
abstract nouns are formed are the same in Greek and
in Sanskrit, they must have existed before the Aryan
separation. The same applies to adjectives which may
likewise be called general and abstract terms, and
which in many cases are formed by the same suffixes

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 79

in Greek and in Sanskrit.- 1 The genitive also was
originally a general and abstract term, and was called
yevLKTf because it expressed the genus to which certain
things belonged. A bird of the water was the same
as an aquatic bird, £ of the water ’ expressing the class
to which certain birds belong. There are languages
deficient in all or many of these points, deficient also
in infinitives and participles, and these deficiencies
have clearly proved fetters in the progress of philo-
sophical thought, while Aryan philosophers were
supplied by their common language with wings for
their boldest flights of speculation. There are even
certain words which contain the result of philosophical
thought, and which must clearly have existed before
the Greek language separated from Sanskrit. Such
common Aryan words are, for instance, man, to think,
(fjtifjLova, memini), manas, mind (/xo>o$), as distinguished
from corpus (Zend Kehrp ), body ; naman, name ; va/c,
speech; veda, I know, olba; sraddadhau, I believe,
credidi ; mrityu, death; amrita, immortal

All this is true and justifies us in speaking of a
kind of common Aryan atmosphere pervading the
philosophy of Greeks and Hindus, — a common, though
submerged stratum of thought from which alone the
materials, whether stone or clay, could be taken with
which to build the later temples of religion, and the
palaces of philosophy. All this should be remembered ;
but it should not be exaggerated.

Independent Character of Indian Philosophy.

Real Indian philosophy, even in that embryonic
form in which we find it in the Upanishads, stands
completely by itself. We cannot claim for it any

LECTUEE III.

historical relationship with the earliest Greek philo-
sophy. The two are as independent of each other as
the Greek Charis, when she has become the wife of
Hephaistos, is of the red horses of the Vedic dawn.

And herein, in this very independence, in this
autochthonic character, lies to my mind the real
charm of Indian philosophy. It sprang up when the
Indian mind had no longer any recollection, had no
longer even an unconscious impression, of its original
consanguinity with the Greek mind. The common
Aryan period had long vanished from the memory of
the speakers of Sanskrit and Greek, before Thales
declared that water was the beginning of all things;
and if we find in the Upanishads such passages as
‘ In the beginning all this was water/ we must not
imagine that there was here any historical borrowing,
we have no right even to appeal to prehistoric Aryan
memories — all we have a right to say is that the
human mind arrived spontaneously at similar con-
clusions when facing the old problems of the world,
whether in India or in Greece. The more the horizon
of our researches is extended, the more we are driven
to admit that what was real in one place was possible
in another.

Was Greek Philosophy borrowed from the East?

In taking this position I know I am opposed to
men of considerable authority, who hold that the
ancient Greek philosophers borrowed their wisdom
from the East, that they travelled in the East, and
that whenever we find any similarity between early
Greek and Oriental philosophy it is the Greeks who
must be supposed to have borrowed, whether from

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES.

Egypt or from Babylon, or even from India. This
question of the possibility of any influence having
been exercised on early Greek philosophy by the
philosophers of Egypt, Persia, Babylon and India
requires, a more careful consideration before we proceed
further. It has been very fully discussed by Zeller in
his great work Die Philosophie dev Griechen . I en-
tirely agree with his conclusions, and I shall try to
give you as concisely as possible the results at which
he has arrived. He shows that the Greeks from very
early times were inclined to admit that on certain
points their own philosophers had been influenced by
Oriental philosophy. But they admitted this with
regard to special doctrines only. That the whole of
Greek philosophy had come from the East was main-
tained at a later time, particularly by the priests
of Egypt after their first intercourse with Greece, and
by the Jews of Alexandria after they had become
ardent students of Greek philosophy. It is curious,
however, to observe how even Herodotus was com-
pletely persuaded by the Egyptian priests, not indeed
that Greek philosophy was borrowed from the Nile,
but that certain gods and forms of worship such as
that of Dionysos, and likewise certain religious doc-
trines such as that of metempsychosis, had actually
been imported into Greece from Egypt. He went so
far as to say that the Pelasgians had originally wor-
shipped gods in general only, but that they had
received their names, with few exceptions, from
Egypt. The Egyptian priests seem to have treated
Herodotus and other Greek travellers very much in
the same way in which Indian priests treated Wilford
and Jacolliot, assuring them that everything they
( 4 ) a

LECTURE III.

asked for, whether in Greek mythology or in the
Old Testament, was contained in their own Sacred
Books. If, however, the study of Egyptian antiquities
has proved anything, it has proved that the names
of the Greek gods were not borrowed from Egypt.
Krantor, as quoted by Proclus (in Tim. 24 B), was
perhaps the first who maintained that the famous
myth told by Plato, that of the Athenians and the
Atlantidae, was contained in inscriptions still found
in Egypt. In later times (400 A. D.) Diodorus Siculus
appealed freely to books supposed to be in the pos-
session of Egyptian priests, in order to prove that
Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, Lykurgus, Solon, and
others had studied in Egypt ; nay, he adds that relics
of Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, Domokritus were
shown there to attest their former presence on the
shores of the Nile. Pythagoras is said to have ac-
quired his knowledge of geometry and mathematics and
his belief in metempsychosis in Egypt ; Demokritus,
his astronomy; Lykurgus, Solon, and Plato, their
knowledge of laws. What was first stated by Egyp-
tian priests from national vanity was afterwards,
when the East was generally believed to have been
the cradle of all wisdom, willingly repeated by the
Greeks themselves. The Neo-Platonists, more par-
ticularly, were convinced that all wisdom had its
first home in the East. The Jews at Alexandria
readily followed their example, trying to prove that
much of Greek religion and philosophy had been
borrowed from their sacred writings. Clement spoke
of Plato as the philosopher of or from the Hebrews
(6 e£ e E/3/)aiW Strom. L 274 B).

Zeller has shown how little historical value can bo

ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 83

ascribed to these statements. He might have pointed
out at the same time that the more critical Greeks
themselves were very doubtful about these travels of
their early philosophers and lawgivers in the East.
Thus Plutarch in his life of Lykurgus says that it
VJ0.8 told that Lykurgus travelled not only to Crete
and Asia Minor, where he became acquainted for the
first time with the poems of Homer, but that he went
also to Egypt. But here Plutarch himself seems
sceptical, for he adds that the Egyptians themselves
say so, and a few Greek writers, while with regard to
his travels to Africa, Spain, and India, they rest, he
adds, on the authority of one writer only, Aristokrates,
the son of Hipparchus.

On the other hand there seems to be some kind of
evidence that an Indian philosopher had once visited
Athens, and had some personal intercourse with
Sokrates. That Persians came to Greece and that
their sacred literature was known in Greece, we can
gather from the fact that Zoroaster’s name, as a
teacher, was known perfectly well to Plato and
Aristotle, and that in the third century B. c. Her-
mippus had made an analysis of the books of Zoro-
aster. This rests on the authority of Pliny ( 'Science
of Language , i. p. 280). As Northern India was
under Persian sway, it is not impossible that not only
Persians, but Indians also, came to Greece and made
there the acquaintance of Greek philosophers. There
is certainly one passage which deserves more atten-
tion than it has hitherto received. Eusebius (Prep.
Ev xi. 3) quotes a work on Platonic Philosophy by
Aristocles, who states therein on the authority of
Aristoxenos, a pupil of Aristotle, that an Indian

G 2

LECTUEE III.

philosopher came to Athens and had a discussion
with Sokrates. There is nothing in this to excite
our suspicion, and what makes the statement of Aria-
toxenos more plausible is the observation itself which
this Indian philosopher is said to have made to
Sokrates. For when Sokrates had told him that his
philosophy consisted in inquiries about the life of
man, the Indian philosopher is said to have smiled
and to have replied that no one could understand
things human who did not first understand things
divine. Now this is a remark so thoroughly Indian
that it leaves the impression on my mind of being
possibly genuine.

But even granting this isolated ease, I have no
doubt that all classical scholars will approve of
Zeller’s judicious treatment of this question of the
origin of Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy is
autochthonous, and requires no Oriental antecedents.
Greek philosophers themselves never say that they
borrowed their doctrines from the East. That Pytha-
goras went to Egypt may be true, that he became
acquainted there with the solutions of certain geo-
metrical problems may be true also, but that he
borrowed the whole of his philosophy from Egypt, is
simply a rhetorical exaggeration of Isok rates. The
travels of Demokritus are better attested, but there is
no evidence that he was initiated in philosophical
doctrines by his barbarian friends. That Plato
travelled in Egypt neod not be doubted, but that
he went to Phoenicia, Chaldaea, and Persia to study
philosophy, is mere guesswork. What Plato thought
of the Egyptians he has told us himself in the Republic
(436) when he says that the special characteristic of

ANCIENT BELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES. 85

the Greeks is love of knowledge, of the Phoenicians
and Egyptians love of money. If he borrowed no
money, he certainly borrowed no philosophy from his
Egyptian friends.

When of late years the ancient literature of Egypt,
Babylon, Persia, India, and China, came to be studied,
there were not wanting Oriental scholars who thought
they had discovered some of the sources of Greek
philosophy in every one of these countries. But this
period also has passed away. The opinions of Bohlen,
Both, Gladisch, Lorinser, and others, are no longer
shared by the best Oriental scholars. They all admit
the existence of striking coincidences on certain points
and special doctrines between Oriental and Occidental
philosophical thought, but they deny the necessity of
admitting any actual borrowing. Opinions like those
of Thales that water is the origin of all things, of
Heraclitus that the Divine pervades all things, of
Pythagoras and Plato that the human soul migrates
through animal bodies, of Aristotle that there are five
elements, of Empedokles and the Orphics that animal
food is objectionable, all these may easily be matched
in Oriental philosophy, but to prove that they were
borrowed, or rather that they were dishonestly ap-
propriated, would require far stronger arguments than
have yet been produced.

Indian Philosophy autochthonous.

Let us remember then that the conclusion at which
we have arrived enables us to treat Indian philosophy
as a perfectly independent witness. It was different
with Indian religion and mythology. In comparing
Indian religion and mythology with the religion and

LECTURE tri.

mythology of Greeks and Romans, Celts and Teutons,
the common Aryan leaven could still be clearly per-
ceived as working in -all of thorn. Their rudiments
are the same, however different their individual
growth. Rut when we come to compare Indian
philosophy with the early philosophies of other Aryan
nations, the case is different. M. Bevillo, in his learned
work on the American religions, has remarked how
the religions of Mexico and Peru come upon us like
the religions of another planet, free from all suspicion
of any influence having ever been exercised by the
thought of the old on the thought of the new world.
The same applies not indeed to the religion, but to
the philosophy of India. Apart from the influence
which belongs to a common language and which must
never be quite neglected, we may treat the earliest
philosophy of India as an entirely independent witness,
as the philosophy of another planet ; and if on certain
points Indian and Greek philosophy arrive at the
same results, we may welcome such coincidences as
astronomers welcomed the coincidences between the
speculations of Leverrier and Adams, both working
independently in their studies at Paris and Cambridge.
We may appeal in fact to the German proverb, Am
zweier Zeugen Murid, Wird alle Wahrheit hind ,
and look upon a truth on which Badarayana and
Plato agree, as not very far from proven.

LECTURE IV.

THE RELATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TO PHYSICAL
AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL RELIGION.

The Constituent Elements of Religion.

O NE of the greatest difficulties in studying ancient
religions is the entire absence of any systematic
arrangement in their Sacred Books. We look in vain
for anything like creeds, articles of faith, or a well-
digested catechism. It is left therefore to ourselves
to reduce the chaos of thoughts which they contain
to some kind of order.

This has been attempted in various ways.
Sometimes the doctrines contained in them have
been arranged in two classes, as dogmas to be believed
(theology), and as rules of conduct to be obeyed
(ethics). Sometimes scholars have collected all that
• refers to the outward ceremonial, and have tried to
separate it from what was believed about the gods.
But in most religions it would be almost impossible
to separate ethics from dogma, while in its origin at
least ceremonial is always the outward manifestation
only of religious belief. Of late these outward or
sacrificial elements of religion have received great
attention, and a long controversy has been carried on

LECTURE IV.

as to whether sacrifice was the real origin of all
religion, or whether every sacrifice, if properly under-
stood, presupposes a "belief in gods to whom the
sacrifices were offered.

The theory, supported chiefly by Professor Gruppe,
that sacrifice comes first and a belief in gods after-
wards seems to me utterly untenable, if not self-
contradictory. An offering surely can only be an
offering to somebody, and even if that somebody has
not yet received a name of his own, he must have
been conceived under a general name, such as celestial,
immortal, divine, powerful, and all the rest.

It is no new discovery, for instance, that many of
the hymns of the Eig-veda presuppose the existence
of a highly developed ceremonial, but to say that this
is the case with all, or that no hymns were composed
except as auxiliary to a sacififi.ee, betrays a strange
ignorance of palpable facts. Even the hymns which
were composed for sacrificial purposes presuppose a
belief in a number of gods to whom sacrifices are
offered. If a hymn was to be used at the morning
sacrifice, that very morning sacrifice owed its origin
to a belief in a god manifested in the rising sun, or in
a goddess of the dawn. The sacrifice was in fact as
spontaneous as a prayer or a hymn, before it became
traditional, technical, and purely ceremonial. On this
point there cannot be two opinions, so long as we
deal with facts and not with fancies.

My own Division.

In my Lectures on Natural Religion, I have pre-
ferred a different division, and have assigned one
course to each of what I consider the constituent

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 89

parts of all religions. My first course of Lectures was
purely introductory, and had for its object a defini-
tion of Natural Religion in its widest sense. I also
thought it necessary, before approaching the subject
itself, to give an account of the documents from which
we may derive trustworthy information about Natural
Religion as it presents itself to us in the historical
growth of the principal religions of the world.

My second course, which treated of Physical Religion,
was intended to show how different nations had
arrived at a belief in something infinite behind the
finite, in something invisible behind the visible, in
many unseen agents or gods of nature, till at last, by
the natural desire for unity, they reached a belief in
one god above all those gods. We saw how what I
called fhe Infinite in nature, or that which underlies
allihat is finite and phenomenal in our cosmic experi-
ence, became named, individualised, and personified,
till in the end it was conceived again as beyond all
names.

My third course, which treated of Anthropological
Religion , was intended to show how different nations
arrived at a belief in a soul, how they named its
various faculties, and what they imagined about its
fate after death.

While thus my second course was intended as a
history of the discovery of the Infinite in nature, my
third course was intended to explain the discovery
of the Infinite in man.

It remains for me to treat, in this my last course, of
the relation between these two Infinites, if indeed
there can be two Infinites, or to explain to you the
ideas which some of the principal nations of the world

LECTURE IV.

have formed on this relation between the soul and
God. It has been truly said, and most emphatically
by Dr. Newman, that neither a belief in God by itself,
nor a belief in the soul by itself, would constitute
religion, and that real religion is founded on a true
perception of the relation of the soul to God and of
God to the soul. What I want to prove is that all this
is true, not only as a postulate, but as an historical fact.

Nor can it be doubted that our concept of God
depends to a great extent on our concept of the soul,
and it has been remarked that it would have been
better if I had treated Anthropological before Physical
Religion, because a belief in the Infinite in nature, in
invisible powers, behind the great phenomena of the
physical world, and at last in a soul of the Universe
would be impossible, without a previous belief in the
Infini te in man, in an invisible agent behind the acts
of man, in fact, in a soul or a spirit. The same idea
was evidently in the mind of Master Eckhart, when
he said, c The nearer a man in this life approaches to
a knowledge of the nature of the soul, the nearer ho
approaches to a knowledge of God V

From an historical point of view, however, the great
phenomena, perceived in the objective world, seem to
have been the first to arouse in the human mind the
idea of something beyond, of something invisible, yet
real, of something infinite or transcending the limits
of human experience. And it was probably in this
sense that an old Rabbi remarked : ‘ God sees and is
not seen; so the soul sees and is not seen 2 .’ The

1 f AIs vil era menseho in disem lebcm mifc aiimn iHdcouxituiNm j«
naher karat clem wisen dor adlo, jo xmhor er isfc dura bokonutniBKO
gotes ’ (ed. Pfeiffer, p. 617, l. 62).

2 Bigg, Bampton Lectures , pp. 8 ; 10, n* 3*

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 91

two processes, leading to a belief in an invisible
God, the Infinite in its objective character, and to a
belief in an invisible soul, or the Infinite in its sub-
jective character, are really so intimately connected
that it is difficult to say which of the two ought to be
treated first, or which of the two came first in the
historical development of religion. What is quite
clear, however, is this, that Psychological Religion
presupposes both Physical and Anthropological Reli-
gion, and that before the soul and God can be brought
into relation with each other, both the concept of God
and the concept of soul had to be elaborated. Nay,
God had to be conceived as soul-like, and the soul of
man as God-like, for like only can know like, like
only can love like, like only can be united with like.

The meaning* of Psychological Religion.

If I use the name of Psychological Religion in order
to comprehend under it all attempts at discovering the
true relation between the soul and God, it is because
other names, such as Theosophic, Psychic, or Mystic, have
been so much misused that they are sure to convey
a false impression. Theosophic conveys the idea of wild
speculations on the hidden nature of God; Psychic
reminds us of trances, visions, and ghosts ; Mystic
leaves the impression of something vague, nebulous,
and secret, while to the student of Psychological Reli-
gion the true relation of the two souls, the human
soul and the divine, is, or ought to be, as clear as the
most perfect logical syllogism. I shall not be able to
avoid these names altogether, because the most promi-
nent representatives of Theosophy and mystic religion
have prided themselves on these names, and they are

LECTUEE IV.

very appropriate, if only clearly defined. Nothing,
of course, is easier, and therefore to certain minds more
tempting than to use the same word in its opprobrious
sense, and thus by a mere name to condemn doctrines
which have been held by the wisest and best of men.
This kind of criticism need not detain us, or keep us
from adopting the name of Theosophy for our own
purposes.

In most of the religions of the ancient world, the
relation between the soul and God has been repre-
sented as a return of the soul to God, A yearning
for God, a kind of divine home-sickness, finds expres-
sion in most religions. But the road that is to lead us
home, and the reception which the soul may expect
in the Father s house, have been represented in very
different ways, in different countries and different
languages,

I. Beturn of tke Soul to Q-od, after death.

We can divide the opinions held and the hopes ex-
pressed on this subject into two classes. According
to some religious teachers, a return of the soul to God
is possible after death only, and we shall see ever so
many attempts, ever so many bridges thrown by hope
and faith across the gulph which seems to separate
the Human from the Divine. Most of these bridges,
however, lead only to the home, or to the throne of God,
and there leave the soul wrapt in intuition and adora-
tion of an unrelated objective deity. Everything is still
more or less mythological. The deity sits on a golden
throne, and the souls, though divested of their material
bodies, are still like the shadows of their earthly bodies,
approaching the foot of the throne, but always kept at
a certain distance from its divine occupant*

CHARACTER OE PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 93

XX. Knowledge of the unity of the Bivine and the Human.

According to other religious teachers, the final
beatitude of the soul can be achieved even in this life,
nay must be achieved in this life, if it is to bear fruit
in the next. That beatitude requires no bridges, it
requires knowledge only, knowledge of the necessary
unity of what is divine in man with what is divine in
God. The Brahmans call it self-knowledge, that is to
say, the knowledge that our true self, if it is anything,
can only be that Self which is All in All, and beside
which there is nothing else. Sometimes this concep-
tion of the intimate relation between the human and
the divine natures comes in suddenly, as the result of
an unexplained intuition or self-recollection. Some-
times, however, it seems as if the force of logic had
driven the human mind to the same result. If God
had once been recognised as the Infinite in nature, and
the soul as the Infinite in man, it seemed to follow
that there could not be two Infinites. The Eleatics
had clearly passed through a similar phase of thought
in their own philosophy. £ If there is an infinite , 5 they
said, c it is one, for if there were two, they could not
be infinite, but would be finite one towards the other.
But that which exists is infinite, and there cannot be
more such ( iovra ). Therefore that which exists is
one V

Nothing can be more decided than this Eleatic
Monism, and with it the admission of a soul, the Infi-
nite in man, as different from God, the Infinite in
nature, would have been inconceivable. In India the

1 Et 5^ aTrGipov, tv el 7 dp Svo ety, ovfc av dvvairo amnipa elvcu • dAA*
exot av irdpara TTpos aWrjXa' a-neipov Sb rb kov, ov/c a pa irAecu ra Uvra’
%v dpa rb kvv. (Melissus, Fragm. 3.)

LECTURE TV.

process was not quite the same, but it led in the end
to the same result. The infinite in nature or Brah-
man had been recognised as free from all predicates
except three, sat, being, In t, perceiving, ananda,
blessedness. When it was afterwards discovered that
of the infinite in man also, the soul, or rather the self,
Atman, nothing could be predicated except the same
triad of qualities, being, perceiving, and rejoicing, the
conclusion was almost irresistible that these two,
Brahman and Atman, were in their nature one.
The early Christians also, at least those who had been
brought up in the schools of Neo-platonist philosophy,
had a clear perception that, if the soul is infinite and
immortal in its nature, it cannot be anything beside
God or by the side of God, but that it must be of God
and in God. St. Paul gave but Ids own bold expres-
sion to the same faith or knowledge, when he uttered
the words which have startled so man}- theologians ;
4 In Him we live and move and have our being.’ If
anyone else had uttered these words, they would at
once have been condemned as pantheism. No doubt
they are pantheism, and yet they express the very
key-note of Christianity. The divine sonship of man
is only a metaphorical expression, but it was meant
originally to embody the same idea. Nor was that
sonship from the first restricted to one manifestation
only of the Divine. The power at all events to become
the sons of God was claimed for all men* And when
the question was asked how the consciousness of this
divine sonship could ever have been lost, the answer
given by Christianity was, by sin, the answer given
by the Upanishads was, by avidy &, nescience. This
marks the similarity, and at the same time the eharae-

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 95

teristic difference between these two religions. The
question how nescience laid hold of the human soul,
and made it imagine that it could live or move or
have its true being anywhere but in Brahman, remains
as unanswerable in Hindu philosophy as in Christi-
anity the question how sin first came into the world 1 .

Veda and Vedanta.

If for the study of Physical Religion, more par-
ticularly of the initial phases of Physical Religion, we
depended chiefly, if not entirely, on the Veda, you
will find that for a study of Psychological Religion
also and its first beginnings, the Veda is likewise,
nay, even more, our most important, if not our only
authority. It is no longer, however, in the hymns
of the Veda that we shall have to discover the fullest
realisation of Psychological Religion, but in what is
called the Ved&nta, the end of the Veda. That is
the name, as you may remember, given to the Upani-
shads or to the 6r/i&naka/nda, the knowledge-portion
as opposed to the KarmaMmZa, the work-portion of
the Veda. It is doubtful whether Vedanta was meant
originally for the end, i. e. the last portion of the Veda,
or, as it is sometimes explained, for the end, that is
the highest object of the Veda. Both interpretations
can be defended. The Upanishads have really their
place as the last portions of the Veda, but they are
also looked upon as conveying the last and highest
lesson of the religion and philosophy of the Veda.

1 Harnaek, i. p. 103. Clemens Alex. (Strom, v, 14, 113) says :
ot'Toos hvvajxiv Xafiovcra fcvpicucrjv r) pfXera aval devs, icanov pikv ovSeu

dXXo ttXtjv dyvoias zivai vopd^ovaa.

LECTUEE IV.

Tlie tTpauisliads.

What these Upanishads are Is indeed not easy to
describe. I have published in the Carved Books of
the East the first complete translation of the twelve
most important Upanishads. The characteristic fea-
ture of them, to which I wish to call your attention
now, is their fragmentary style. They are not sys-
tematic treatises, such as we are accustomed to in
Greek philosophy, but they are fragments, they are
mere guesses at truth, sometimes ascribed to sages
whose names are given, sometimes represented in the
form of dialogues. They arc mostly in prose, but
they contain frequent remnants of philosophical poetry
also. It is curious, however, that though unsystematic
in form, they are not without a system underlying
them all. We often find that the same subjects are
treated in a similar, nay, in the same manner, some-
times in the same words, in different Upanishads,
reminding us In this respect of the three synoptic
Gospels with their striking similarities and their no
less striking dissimilarities. In some cases we see
even opinions diametrically opposed to each other,
maintained by different authorities. While in one
place we read, ‘In the beginning there was Sat/ to
or, we read in another , 4 In the beginning there was
A sat/ to fxi] oik Other authorities say , 4 In the begin-
ning there was darkness ; In the beginning there was
water ; In the beginning there was l’ra</Hpati, the lord
of all created things; In the beginning there was
Brahman ; In the beginning there was the Self/

It would seem difficult at first sight to construct
a well-arranged building out of such heterogeneous

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 97

materials, and yet that is the very thing that has
been achieved by the builders of what is called the
Vedanta system of philosophy.

The difficulties of the framers of that system were
increased a hundredfold by the fact that they had to
accept every word and every sentence of the Upani-
shads as revealed and as infallible. However con-
tradictory at first sight, all that was said in the
Upanishads had to be accepted, had to be explained,
had to be harmonised somehow (samanvaya). And
it was harmonised and welded into a system of philo-
sophy that for solidity and unity will bear comparison
with any other system of philosophy in the world.
This was done in a work which is called the Vedanta-
sfttras.

Vedanta-Sutras .

Sutra means literally a string, but it is here used
as the name of short and almost enigmatical sentences
which contain the gist, as it were, of each chapter in
the most concise language, forming a kind of table of
contents of the whole system of philosophy. I do
not know anything like this Sutra-style in any
literature, while in India there is a whole period of
literature during which everything that is elsewhere
treated, either in prose or in poetry, has been reduced
to these short aphorisms. The earlier of these Sutras
are still to a certain extent intelligible, though always
difficult to understand. But after a time they became
so condensed, their authors employed so many merely
algebraic contrivances, that it seems to me that by
themselves they must often have been utterly useless.
It would seem that they were meant to be learnt by
heart at first, and then to be followed by an oral
(ft H

LECTUBE IV.

explanation, but it is difficult to say whether they
were composed independently, or whether they were
from the beginning a mere abstract of an already
existing work, a kind of table of contents of a com-
pleted work. I must confess that whether these Sutras
were composed at a time when writing was as yet
unknown, or whether they were meant at first as the
headings of written treatises, their elaboration seems
to me far beyond anything that we could achieve
now. They must have required a concentration of
thought which it is difficult for us to realise. As
works of art they are of course nothing, but for the
purpose for which they were intended, for giving a
complete and accurate outline of a whole system of
philosophy, they are admirable; for, if properly ex-
plained, they leave no doubt whatever as to the exact
meaning of the authors of systems of philosophy on
any point of their teaching. The same applies to the
manuals of grammar, of ceremonial, of jurisprudence,
and all the rest, composed likewise in the form of
Sfitras.

The number of these Sfttras or headings for the
system of the Vedanta philosophy amounts to about
555. They form four books (adhyayas), each divided
into four chapters, (pada).

Besides Ved&nta-sfttras this gigantic work is also
known by the name of Mimamsa-si A itras. Other
names are Brahma-sfitras, or $ariraka
sfttras, or Vyasa-sfttras. Mim&msa is a desiderative
form of the root man, to think, and a very appro-
priate name, therefore, for philosophy. A distinc-
tion, however, is made between the PCtrvd and the
Uttar& Mimams&, that is, the former and later

CHAKACTEB OF PSYCHOLOGICAL BELIGIOH. 99

Mimamsa, the former Mimamsa being an attempt
to reduce the ceremonial and the sacrificial rules of
the Yeda to a consistent system, the latter having
for its object, as we saw, the systematic arrangement
of the utterances scattered about in the Upanishads
and having reference to Brahman as the Self of the
universe and at the same time the Self of the soul
The Sutras of the former Mimamsll are ascribed to
(jaimini, those of the latter to Badarayam.

Who Badarayam was and when he lived, as usual
in Indian literature, we do not know. All we can
say is that his Sfttras presuppose the existence not
only of the principal Upanishads, but likewise of a
number of teachers who are quoted by name, but
whose works are lost to us.

Commentary by Sahkar&k&rya.

The most famous, though possibly not the oldest
extant commentary on these Sutras is that by Sankara
or $ankar&&arya. He is supposed to have lived in
the eighth or seventh century a.d. 1 His commentary
has been published several times in Sanskrit, and
there are two translations of it, one in German by
Professor Deussen, the other in English by Professor
Thibaut, forming the XXXIV th volume of the Sacred

1 Mr. Pathaka in the Ind. Ant. XI, 174, fixes his date as Kaliyuga
3889 to 3921 = 787 to 789 a.d., a date accepted by Weber [History of
Indian Literature, p. 51) and other scholars. Sankara’s birth is generally
supposed to have taken place at Kal&pi in Kerala in the Kaliyuga
year 3889, in the Yikramayear 845, that is about 788 a.d. (Deussen,
System , p. 37). Mr. Telang, however, fixes Sankara’s date as early* as
590 A.D., and Fleet places the Hepalese King Vn'shadeva, who knew
Sankara and called his son after him Sankaradeva, between 630-
655 a.d. (Deussen, Sutras, p. vii). See Fleet in Ind. Ant., Jan. 1887,

100

LECTUEE IV.

Boohs of the East . There is one more volume still to
follow. But though Sankara’s commentary enjoys
the highest authority all over India, there are other
commentaries which hold their own by its side, and
which differ from it on some very essential points.

Commentary Tby R&maim^a.

The best known is the so-called /Sfi-bhasliya by
Eamanuya, a famous Vaishwava theologian who is
supposed to have lived in the twelfth century a.d.
He often opposes /Sankara’s theories, and does it not
in his own name only, but as representing an altogether
independent stream of tradition. In India, where,
even long after the introduction of writing, intellectual
life and literary activity continued to run in the old
channels of oral teaching, we constantly meet with a
number of names quoted as authorities, though we
have no reason to suppose that they ever left anything
in writing. Ramanuja does not represent himself as
starting a new theory of the Vedanta, but he appeals
to Bodhayana, the author of a vntti or explanation
of the Brahma-shtras, as his authority, nay he refers
to previous commentaries orVrittikaras on Bodhayana,
as likewise supporting his opinions. It has been sup-
posed that one of these, Dramicfa, the author of a
DramkMMshya or a commentary on Bodhayana,
is the same as the Dravicfa whose Bhashya on the
ZMndogya-upanishad is several times referred to
by /Sankara in his commentary on that Upanishad
(p. 1, 1. 2 infra), and whose opinions on the Vedanta-
s&tras are sometimes supported by /Sankara (see
Thibaut, S. B. E: XXXiy, p. xxii). Badaraya?ia
himself, the author of the Vedanta-sutras, quotes a

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 101

number of earlier authorities \ but it does by no
means follow that there ever existed Sutras in the
form of books composed by them.

Three Periods of Vedanta Literature.

In studying the Vedanta philosophy, we have to
distinguish three successive layers of thought. We
have first of all the Upanishads, which presuppose a
large number of teachers, these teachers often differing
from each other on essential, and likewise on trivial
points. We have secondly the Sutras of B&daraya?ia,
professing to give the true meaning of the Upanishads,
reduced to a systematic form, but admitting the exis-
tence of different opinions, and referring to certain
authors as upholding divergent views. We have
thirdly the commentaries of Sankara, Bodhayana,
Ramanuja, and many others. These commentaries,
however, are not mere commentaries in our sense of
the word, they are really philosophical treatises, each
defending an independent view of the Sutras* and
indirectly of the Upanishads.

Peculiar Character of Indian Philosophy.

It is not surprising that philosophers, on reading
for the first time the Upanishads or the Vedanta- sutras
should find them strange, and miss in them that close
concatenation of ideas to which they are accustomed
in the philosophy of the West. It is difficult to over-
come the feeling that the stream of philosophical
thought, as we know it in Europe, passing from Greece

1 For instance, Atreya, Asmarathya, Audulomi, K&rshw&^iai.
Kasakntsna, Gaimini, Badari. Thibaut, XXXIV, p. xix.

102

LECTURE IV.

through the middle ages to our own shores, is the only-
stream on which we ourselves can freely move. It is
particularly difficult to translate the language of
Eastern philosophy into the language of our^own
philosophy, and to recognise our own problems in
their philosophical and religious difficulties. Still we
shall find that beneath the surface there is a similarity
of purpose in the philosophy of the East and of the
West, and that it is possible for us to sympathise
with the struggles after truth, even though they are
disguised under a language that sounds at first strange
to students of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and
Spinoza, of Locke and Hegel.

Philosophy begins with doubting the Evidence of the Senses.

-N Botb philosophies, that of the East and that of the
West, start from a common point, namely from the
eviction that our ordinary knowledge is uncertain
il not, altogether wrong. This revolt of the human
mind a|jjnst itself is the first step in all philosophy.
The Ved&ita philosophy represents that revolt in all
Its fulness. vOur knowledge, according to Hindu
philosophers^epends on two pram&was, that is
measures or authorities, namely, pratyaksha, sensu-
ous perception, ind anumana, that is, deduction.

, adds a third
This, from a
to us a weak-
and we know

CHABACTEK OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EELIGION. 103

that it is shared by other philosophers nearer home.
$ruti means hearing or what has been heard, and it is
generally explained as meaning simply the Veda.
The Veda is looked upon, from the earliest times of
which we know anything in India, as superhuman ;
not as invented and composed, but only as seen by
men, that is, by inspired seers, as eternal, as infallible,
as divine in the highest sense.

We are apt to imagine that the idea of inspiration
and a belief in the inspired character of Sacred Books
is our own invention, and our own special property.
It is not, and a comparative study of religion teaches
us that, like the idea of the miraculous, the idea
of inspiration also is almost inevitable in certain
phases in the historical growth of religion. This does
not lower the meaning of inspiration, it only gives it
a larger and a deeper meaning.

If we take Veda in the ordinary sense in which it
is generally taken by Indian philosophers, we must
admit that to place its authority on a level with the
evidence of the senses and the conclusions of reason,
seems difficult to understand. It is reason alone that
calls inspiration inspiration ; reason therefore stands
high above inspiration. But if we take Veda as know-
ledge, or as it sometimes is explained as aptava/cana,
i. e. language, such as it has been handed down to us, the
case is different. The language which has come down
to us, the words in which thought has been realised,
the world of ideas in which we have been brought up,
form an authority, and exercise a sway over us, second
only, if second at all, to the authority of the senses.
If the Hindu philosopher looks upon the great words
of our language as eternal, as communicated from

104

LECTURE IY.

above, as only seen, not as made by us, he does no
more than Plato when he taught that his so-called
ideas are eternal and divine.

But though this more profound concept of $ruti
breaks forth occasionally in Hindu philosophy, the
ordinary acceptation of /Sruti is simply the Veda, such
as we possess it, as consisting of hymns and Br&hmar&as,
though no doubt at the same time also, as the ancient
depository of language and thought, not so much in
what it teaches, but in the instruments by which it
teaches, namely in every word that conveys an
idea.

But the Vedanta philosopher, after having recognised
these three authorities, turns against them and says
that they are all uncertain or even wrong. The or-
dinary delusions of the senses are as familiar to him
as they are to us. He knows that the sky is not blue,
though we cannot help our seeing it as blue ; and as
all deductions are based on the experience of the senses,
they are naturally considered as equally liable to error.

As to the Veda, however, the Vedantist makes an
important distinction between what he calls" ‘ the
practical portion, the Karmak&m?a , 5 and £ the theore-
tical portion, the G^anak&wcZa/ The former comprises
hymns and Brahmarais, the latter the Upanishads.
The former, which includes all that a priesthood would
naturally value most highly, is readily surrendered.
It is admitted that it may be useful for a time, that it
may serve as a necessary preparation, but we are told
that it can never impart the highest knowledge which
is to be found in the second portion alone* Even
that second portion, the Upanishads, may seem to
contain many imperfect expressions of the highest

CHARACTER OE PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 105

truth, but it is the object of the Vedanta philosopher
to explain away these imperfect expressions or to
bring them into harmony with the general drift of the
Vedanta. This is done with all the cleverness of the
philosophical pleader, though it often leaves the
unprejudiced student doubtful whether he should
follow the philosophical pleader, or whether he should
recognise in these imperfect expressions traces of an
historical growth, and of individual efforts which in
different Brahmanic settlements need not always have
been equally successful.

Tat tvaxn asi.

If we ask what was the highest purpose of the
teaching of the Upanishads we can state it in three
words, as it has been stated by the greatest Ved&nta
teachers themselves, namely Tat tvam asi. This
means, Thou art that. That stands for what I called
the last result of Physical Religion which is known
to us under different names in different systems of
ancient and modem philosophy. It is Zeus or the
E Is 0eo? or to ov in Greece ; it is what Plato meant
by the Eternal Idea, what Agnostics call the Un-
knowable, what I call the Infinite in Nature. This
is what in India is called Brahman, as masculine or
neuter, the being behind all beings, the power that
emits the universe, sustains it and draws it back again
to itself. The Thou is what I called the Infinite in
Man, the last result of Anthropological Religion, the
Soul, the Self, the being behind every human Ego,
free from all bodily fetters, free from passions, free
from all attachments. The expression Thou art that,
means Thine Atman, thy soul, thy self is the Brahman,

106

LECTUKE IV.

or, as we can also express it, the last result, the highest
object discovered by Physical Religion is the same as
the last result, the highest subject discovered by
Anthropological Religion ; or, in other words, the
subject and object of all being and all knowing are
one and the same. This is the gist of what I call
Psychological Religion , or Theosophy, the highest sum-
mit of thought which the human mind has reached,
which has found different expressions in different
religions and philosophies, but nowhere such a clear
and powerful realisation as in the ancient Upanishads
of India, y

For let me add at once, this recognition of the
identity of the that and the thou , is not satisfied with
mere poetical metaphor such as that the human soul
emanated from the divine soul or was a portion of it;
no, what is asserted and defended against all gaih-
sayers is the substantial identity of what had for a
time been wrongly distinguished as the subject and
object of the world.

The Self, says the Vedanta philosopher, cannot be
different from Brahman, because Brahman compre-
hends all reality, and nothing that really is can
therefore be different from Brahman. Secondly, the
individual self cannot be conceived as a modification
of Brahman, because Brahman by itself cannot be
changed, whether by itself, because it is one and
perfect in itself, or by anything outside it. Here we
see the Vedantist moving in exactly the same stratum
of thought in which the Eleatic philosophers moved
in Greece. ‘ If there is one Infinite, 5 they said, c there
cannot be another, for the other would limit the one,
and thus render it finite/ Or, as applied to God, the

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 107

Eleatics argued, c If God is to be the mightiest and the
best, he must be one 1 5 for if there -were two or more,
he would not be the mightiest and best/ The Eleatics
continued their • monistic argument by showing that
this One Infinite Being cannot be divided, so that
anything could be called a portion of it, because there
is no power that could separate anything from it 2 .
Nay, it cannot even have parts, for, as it has no
beginning and no end it can have no parts, for a
part has a beginning and an end \

These Eleatic ideas — namely, that there is and there
can be only One Absolute Being, infinite, unchange-
able, without a second, without parts and passions —
are the same ideas which underlie the Upanishads
and have been fully worked out in the Vedanta-
sfitras.

Two "Vedanta Schools.

But they are not adopted by all V ed&ntists. Though
all Vedantists accept the Upanishads as inspired and
infallible, and though they all recognise the authority
of the Vedanta-sutras, they, like other orthodox
philosophers, claim the freedom of interpretation, and
by that freedom, have become divided into two schools
which to the present day divide the Yedantist philo-
sophers of India into, the followers of Sankara, and
the followers of B&manu^a. The latter, B&manu(/a,

1 Zeller, p. 458.

2 Zeller, p. 472 ; Parm. y. 78,

ov 5£ dtaiperov Icmv, eirel rrav earlv ofimov
o v3£ ti ry paWov t 6tcev ecpyot puv £vi 'ix €ff ^ at
ovdS Ti x GL P& re P 0V ' ’ n & v v\4ov karlv govtos.

3 Zeller, p. 511, fragm. 2.

4 Melissus, Fr. 16, ei plv k6v Icrrt, aitrb tv eTvar tv hbv Seiabrb

acbpa jU7) et de.exoi 7raxo$, tx 0L & v P-opia teal ovtceri av gitj ev.

Fr. 3, €i dirmpov , el yap 5vo eiy, ovtc dp hvvairo arreipa etvar
aXA.’ ex 01 & v tretpara rrpbs aWyka* aireLpov 5£ to ebv, ovte apa irXeot rd
edvra' tv apa to gov.

108

LECTUKE IV.

holds to what we should call the theory of evolution ;
he looks upon Brahman as the cause, upon the world
as the effect, the two being different in appearance,
though in reality one and the same. Everything that
is, is Brahman, but Brahman contains in itself the real
germs of that variety which forms the object of our
sensuous perception. The Brahman of Ram&nucya may
almost be called a personal God, and the soul an indi-
vidual being sprung from Brahman. Though never
really apart from him 5 it is supposed to remain for
ever a personality by itself. The former, Sankara,
holds to the theory of illusion (vivarta) or nescience
(avidy&). He also maintains that everything that
exists is Brahman, but he looks upon the world, with
its variety of forms and names, as the result of illusion.
Brahman with /Sankara is impersonal and without
attributes. It becomes personal (as isvara, or the
Lord) when under the influence of avidya, just as the
individual soul deems itself personal when turned
away from the highest Brahman, but is never in reality
anything else but Brahman. These two doctrines
continue to divide the Vedantists to the present day,
and the school of Ramanuja is the more popular of
the two. For it must not be supposed that this
ancient Ved&nta philosophy is extinct, or studied by
professed philosophers only. It is even now the pre-
vailing philosophy and almost religion of India, and no
one can gain an insight into the Indian mind, whether
in the highest or in the lowest ranks of society, who
is not familiar with the teachings of the Vedanta.

In order to explain how the same texts, the Upa-
nishads, and even the Ved&nta-shtras, could lend
themselves to such different explanations, it will be

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. 109

necessary to say a few words on the difficulty of
rightly understanding these ancient sacred texts of
the Brahmans.

The Upanislia&s dif&CTslt to translate.

In my lectures on Physical Religion, when quoting
from the hymns of the Rig-veda, I had often to warn
you that there are many passages in these ancient
hymns which are as yet obscure or extremely difficult
to translate. The great bulk of these hymns is clear
enough, but whether owing to corruptions in the text,
or to the boldness of ancient thought, all honest
scholars are bound to confess that their translations
do not quite reach the originals, and are liable to
correction in the future. To an outsider this may
seem to be a desperate state of things, and if he finds
two Vedic scholars differing from each other, and
defending each his own interpretation with a warmth
that often seems to arise from conceit rather than
from conviction, he thinks he is justified in thanking
God that he is not as other men are. Of course, this
is simply childish. If we had waited till every
hieroglyphic text had been interpreted from beginning
to end, or till every Babylonian inscription had been
fully deciphered, before saying anything about the
ancient religion of the Egyptians and Babylonians,
we should not now possess the excellent works of
Lepsius, Brugsch, Maspero, of Schrader, Smith, Sayce,
Pinches and Haupt. The same applies to Yedic
literature. Here also the better is the enemy of the
good, and as long as scholars are careful to distinguish
between what is certain and what is as yet doubtful,
they need not mind the jeers of would-be critics, or the
taunts of obstructionists. The honest labourer must not

110

LECTURE IV.

wait till he can work in the full light of the noontide
sun— he must get up early, and learn to find his way
in the dim twilight of the morning also.

I think it right therefore to warn you that the
texts of the Upanishads also, on which we shall have
chiefly to depend in our lectures, are sometimes very
obscure, and very difficult to translate accurately into
English or any other modern language. They often
lend themselves to different interpretations, and even
their ancient native commentators who have written
long treatises on them, often differ from each other.
Some hold this opinion, they often say, others that,
and it is not always easy for us to choose and to say
positively which of the ancient interpreters was right
and which was wrong. When I undertook to publish
the first complete translation of the twelve most im-
portant Upanishads, I was well aware that it was no
easy task. It had never before been carried out in its
completeness by any Sanskrit scholar. As I had myself
pointed out that certain passages lent themselves to
different explanations, nothing was easier to the fault-
finding critic than to dwell on these passages and to
point out that their translation was doubtful or that the
rendering I had adopted was wrong, or that at all events
another rendering was equally possible. My translation
has not escaped this kind of criticism, but for all
that, even my most severe critics have not been able to
deny that my translation marked a decided progress
over those that had been hitherto attempted, and this,
as Professor Boehtlingk has truly remarked, is after
all, all that an honest scholar should care for. The
best authority on this subject, Professor Deussen, has
warned our ill-natured and ill-informed critics that in

CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION - . Ill

the translation of the Upanishads, as in other works
of the same tentative character, le mieux est Venrtem't
du bien . We ought to advance step by step beyond
our predecessors, well knowing that those who come
after us will advance beyond ourselves. Nor do I
wonder that native scholars should be amazed at our
hardihood in venturing to differ from such men as
$ankara, Ramatirtha, and others, whom they look
upon as almost infallible. All I can say in self-defence
is that even the native commentators admit the
possibility of different explanations, and that in claim-
ing for ourselves the right to choose between them, we
do no more than what they would wish us to do in
giving us the choice. I have a great respect for native
commentators, but I cannot carry my respect for these
learned men so far as a native Indian scholar who
when I asked him which of two conflicting inter-
pretations he held to be the right one, answered with-
out any misgivings, that probably both were right,
and that otherwise they would not have been men-
tioned by the ancient commentators.

I have often been told that it is not wise to lay so
much stress on the uncertainties attaching to the
translation of Oriental texts, particularly of the
Yedas, that the same uncertainties exist in the inter-
pretation of the Bible, nay even of Greek and Latin
classics, to say nothing of Greek and Latin inscriptions.
The public at large, they say, is sufficiently incredulous,
as it is, and it is far better to give the last results of
our researches as certain for the time being, leaving
it to the future to correct such mistakes as are inevit-
able in the deciphering of ancient texts. This advice
has been followed by many students, more particularly

112

LECTUBE IV.

by the decipherers of hieroglyphic and cuneiform
inscriptions; but what has been the result? As every
year has corrected the results of the previous year,
hardly anyone now ventures to make use of the results
of these researches, however confidently they are put
forward as final, and as beyond the reach of doubt.
It is quite true that the warnings given by con-
scientious scholars as to the inevitable uncertainty
in the translation of Yedic texts, may produce the
same effect. My having called the Veda a book with
seven seals has been greedily laid hold of by certain
writers to whom the very existence of the Veda was
an offence and a provocation, in order to show the
insecurity of all systems of comparative philology,
mythology and theology, based on evidence derived
from this book with seven seals. True scholars,
however, know better. They know that in a long
Latin inscription certain words may be quite illegible,
others difficult to decipher and to translate, and that
yet a considerable portion may be as clear and as
intelligible as any page of Cicero, and may be used
for linguistic or historical purposes with perfect
safety. Scholars know that the same applies to the
Veda, and that many words, many lines, many pages
are as clear as any page of Cicero.

When I am asked what can be the use of a book
with seven seals for a comparative study of religion
and mythology, my answer is that it stimulates us to
remove those seals. In the case of the Veda I may
safely say that several of these seals have by this
time been broken, and there is every reason to hope
that with honesty and perseverance the remaining
seals also will in time be removed.

LECTURE V.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

Different Statements from the TTpanishads.

W E have now to consider what the Upanishads
themselves teach on the relation of the soul to
God, and more particularly of the return of the soul
to Brahman. Here we shall find that both schools
of the Ved&ntists, that of Ramanuja and that of
Sankara, can appeal to texts of the TTpanishads
in support of their respective opinions, so that it
seems as if the TTpanishads combined both and re-
jected neither of the leading Ved&nta theories. Of
course there have been long discussions among
Ved&ntists in India, and likewise among students
of the Vedanta in Europe, as to which of the two
schools represents the true spirit of the TTpanishads.
If we take the TTpanishads as a whole, I should say
that $ankara is the more thorough and faithful
exponent of their teaching ; but if we admit an histo-
rical gj*owth in the TTpanishads themselves, R&m&nm/a
may be taken as representing more accurately an
eaidier period of Upanishad doctrines, which were cast
into the shade, if not superseded, by a later growth
of V edantic speculation. That later growth, repre-
sented by the denial of any reality except that of the
highest Brahman, is almost ignored by Ramanuja or
interpreted by him with great freedom. If we under-
(4) X

114

LECTURE V.

stand Ramanuga rightly, he would seem satisfied
with the soul being at death emancipated from
sawis&ra or further births, passing on to the world of
Brahman, masc., and there enjoying everlasting bliss
in a kind of heavenly paradise. /Sankara, on the con-
trary, goes beyond, and looks upon final emancipation
as a recovering of true self-consciousness, self-con-
sciousness meaning with him the consciousness of the
self as being in reality the whole and undivided
Brahman.

, We shall best be able to follow this twofold de-
velopment of Vedantic thought, if we first examine
the more important passages in the Upanishads
which treat of the return of the soul to the Lower
Brahman, and then see how these passages have been
harmonised in the Vedanta-sutras 1 .

We begin with the descriptions of the road that is
to be taken by the soul after death. Here we find
the following more or less differing accounts in dif-
ferent Upanishads.

Passages from the TFpanisha&s.

I. Br£had-&ra^yaka VI. (8) 2, 13 :

e A man lives so long as he lives, and then when
he dies, they take him to the fire, (the funeral pile) ;
and then the fire is his fire, the fuel is his fuel, the

1 The translations here given differ in several places from those
given in my translation in the S. B , E., vols. i and xv. In my
translation in the S. B. E. I placed myself more completely on the
standpoint of Sankara, except in cases whore ho was dearly wrong.
In the present translations I have tried, as much as possible, not
to allow myself to be influenced by Sankara, in order to be quite
fair towards Ramanuja and other interpreters of the Upanishads
and the Vedanta-sfltras. I have also availed myself of some con-
jectural emendations, proposed by other scholars, wherever they
seemecj to me reasonable.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 115

smoke his smoke, the light his light, the coals his
coals, and the sparks his sparks. In that fire the
Devas, the gods, offer man (as a sacrifice), and from
that sacrifice man (purusha) rises, brilliant in colour.

‘ Those who thus know this and those who in the
forest worship the True as faith 1 , go to light, from
light to day, from day to the waxing half of the moon
(new moon), from the waxing half of the moon to the
six months when the sun goes North 2 , from those
six months to the world of the Devas, from the world
of the Devas to the sun, from the sun to the place of
lightning 3 . When they have reached the place of
lightning, a person, not a man 4 , comes near them

1 Yagnavalkya III. 192 explains this by sraddhaya parayii yuWi,
endowed with the highest faith. The exact meaning is not clear.
The True is meant for Brahman.

2 Cf. Deussen, Sutr., p. 19 ; Sysi, p. 509.

3 On the connection of lightning with the moon, see Hillebrandt,
Ved. Mythologie , vol. i. pp. 345, 421.

4 The right reading here and in the ZMndogya-Upanishad IV.
15, 5, seems to be purusho amanavai We have, however, for
the other reading manasaft the authority of Ya^ftavalkya III. 194,
but am&nava& is strongly supported by the Vedanta-sutras and by
the commentators (.see p. 134). Professor Boehtlingk prefers
manasaft, and translates: ‘Now comes the spirit who dwells in
the thinking organ and takes them to the places of Brahman/
This cannot be.

Sankara here explains purusho manasaft as a man produced by
Brahman through his mind. This is possible, and better at all
events than Boehtlingk’s translation. For purusho manasa/i,
if it means the spirit that dwells in the thinking organ, as, for
instance, in Taitt. Up. I. 6, could not be said to approach the
souls, for they would be themselves the purushas who have
reached the lightning. If we read manasa, we could only take
it for a purusha, a person, though not a material being, who
may therefore be called m&nasaft, either as a being visible to the
mind (manas) only, or as a being created by the mind, in fact
a kind of spirit in the form of a man, though not a real man.
I prefer, however, to read amanava. What confirms me in this
belief is that in the Avesta also, which shares many ideas about
the journey of the souls after death with the Upanishads, we read
that when the soul of the departed approaches the Paradise of the

I 2

116

LECTUEE V.

and leads them to the worlds of Brahman. In these
worlds of Brahman they dwell for ever and ever
(para h paravata h) 1 J and there is no return for them . 5

Here yon see a distinctly mythological view of a
future life, some of it hardly intelligible to ns. The
departed is supposed to rise from the pile on which
his body was burnt, and to move on to the light
(ar/ois) 2 . This is intelligible, but after the light follows
the day, and after the day the six months of the sun’s
journey to the North. What can be the meaning of
that? It might mean that the departed has to wait
a day and then six months before he is admitted to
the world of the Devas, and then to the sun, and then
to the place of lightning. But it may mean also that
there are personal representatives of all these stations,
and that the departed has to meet these half-divine
beings on his onward journey. This is Badar&yana’s
view. Here you see the real difficulties of a trans-

Endless Lights, a spirit, or, as we read in one of the Yashfcs ( S , B. £*.,
xxiii. p. 317), one of the faithful, who has departed before him,
approaches the new comer and asks him several questions, before
Aliura Mazda gives him the oil and the food that are destined in
heaven for the youth of good thoughts, words, and deeds. This
shows how careful we should be not to be too positive in our
translations of difficult passages. We may discard the authority
of Sankara, possibly even that of Badartlyrma, who takes purusho
am&naVaA as a person, not a man. But before we can do this, we
ought to show by parallel passages that purusho nutnasa//, not
manomaya/i, has ever been used in the Upauishads in the sense of
the spirit who dwells in the thinking organ. Till that is done, it
would be better for Professor Boehtlingk not to treat the traditional
interpretations of B&dar&yawa and Sankara with such undisguised
contempt.

1 This seems to correspond to stlsvaWi sa mdh in Y, 10, 1, and to
have a temporal rather than local meaning.

2 This cannot bo meant for the lire of the funeral pile by which
he has been burnt, for the dead is supposed to be in the lire, and
consumed by it. It is sometimes supposed to be meant for the
Agnxloka, the world of Agni,

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 117

lation. The words are clear enough, but the difficulty
is how to connect any definite ideas with the words.

So much for those who pass on the Devayana, the
Path of the Gods, from the funeral pile to the worlds
of Brahman, and who are not subject to a return,
i. e. to new births. If, however, the departed has not
yet reached a perfect knowledge of Brahman, he
proceeds after death on the Pitriyam, the Path of the
Fathers. Of them the Brihad-ara^yaka (VI. (8) 2,
16) says :

fi But they who conquer the worlds by sacrifice,
charity, and austerity go to smoke, from smoke to
night, from night to the waning half of the moon,
from the waning half of the moon to the six months
when the sun moves South ; from these months to the
world of the Fathers, from the world of the Fathers to
the moon. Having reached the moon, they become
food, and the gods consume them there, as they con-
sume Soma (moon) the King, saying, Wax and wane !
But when this is over, they go back to the same
ether 1 , from ether to air, from air to rain, from rain
to the earth. And when they have reached the earth,
they become food, they are offered again in the fire
which is man, and thence are born in the fire of
woman 2 . Then they rise upwards to the worlds,
and go the same round as before. Those, however,
who know neither of the two paths, .become worms,
insects, and creeping things.'

We have now to examine some other passages in the
Upanishads, where the same two paths are described.

1 See jEMnd. Up. V. 10, 4.

2 This sentence is left out by Boehtlingk ; why ? See JKMnd.
Up. Y. 7 and 8.

118.

LECTURE Y.

II. BWhad-^ra^yaka V. (7) 10, 1:

e When the person goes away from this world, he
comes to the wind. Then the wind makes room for
him, like the hole of a wheel, and through it he
mounts higher. He comes to the sun. Then the sun
makes room for him, like the hole of a lambara
(drum ?), and through it he mounts higher. He comes
to the moon. Then the moon makes room for him,
like the hole of a drum, and through it he mounts
higher, and arrives at the world where there is no
sorrow, and no snow. There he dwells eternal years 5
(s&svatiA samaA).

III. ZMndogya-Upanishad VIII. 6, 5 :

‘When he departs from this body he mounts up-
wards by those very rays (the rays of the sun which
enter the arteries of the body), or he is removed while
saying Om 1 . And quickly as he sends off his mind
(as quick as thought), he goes to the sun. For
the sun is the door of the world (lokadvaram), an
entrance for the knowing, a bar to the ignorant. 5

IV. ITMndogya-Upanishad V. 10, 1:

‘ Those who know this, and those who in the forest
follow austerity as faith, go to the light (ar&is), from
light to day, from day to the waxing half of the
moon, from the waxing half of the moon to the six
months when the sun goes to the North, from the
six months when the sun goes to the North to the
year, from the year to the sun, from the sun to the
moon, from the moon to the lightning. There is a
person, not a man, he leads them to Brahman. This
is the Path of the Gods.

1 Boehtlingk’s conjectural emendations of this passage seem to
me unnecessary.

JOUENEY OF THE SOUL AFTEE DEATH. 119

c But those who in their village practise charity as
sacrifice and pious works, go to the smoke, from smoke
to night, from night to the other (waning) half of the
moon, from the other half of the moon to the six
months when the sun moves to the South. But they
do not reach the year. From the months they go to the
world of the Fathers, from the world of the Fathers to
the ether, from the ether to the moon. That is Soma,
the King. That is the food of the gods, the gods
feed on it. Having tarried there, as long as there is
a rest (of works), they return again on the way on
which they came, to the ether, from the ether to the
air (vayu). When he has become air he becomes
smoke, having become smoke he becomes mist, having
become mist he becomes a cloud, having become a
cloud he rains down. Then they are born 1 * as rice
and corn, herbs and trees, sesamum and beans. From
thence the escape is very difficult. For whoever
they are who eat that food and scatter seed, he be-
comes like unto them. Those whose conduct has
been good will probably attain some good birth, the
birth of a Brahma-na, or a Kshatriya, or a Vaisya.
But those whose conduct has been evil will probably
attain an evil birth, the birth of a dog, or a hog, or a
k&nd&ldiu On neither of these two roads do those
small, oft-returning creatures proceed. Theirs is the
third state, of which it is said, “ Live and die.” 5

V. KMndogya-Upanishad VIII. 4, 3 :

c To those only who find that Brahma-world by
means of Brahma/carya (study and abstinence), does

1 It should be remembered that in the Kig-veda already Soma

is tbe retodlia/i, the giver of seed and fertility.

120

LECTURE Y.

that Brahma- world belong, and they move about
freely in all worlds/

VI. Jf/mndogya-Upanishad VIII. 13 :

‘I go from $yama, the black (the moon), to the
Gabala, the speckled (the sun), and from the speckled
to the black. Like a horse shaking his hairs (I shake
off) evil, like the moon, freeing himself from the
mouth of Baku, having shaken off the body, I go
purified in mind to the eternal world of Brahman V

VII. MumZaka-Upanishad I. 2, 11 :

c But those who practise penance and faith in the
forest, tranquil, wise, and living on alms, depart, free
from passions (dust), through the gate of the sun,
where that immortal Person dwells whose nature is
imperishable/

VIII. Kaushitaki-Upanishad I. 2 :

c And Antra said : All who depart from this world
(or this body) go to the moon. In the former, (the
waxing) half, the moon waxes big by their vital
spirits, but in the other, (the waning) half, the moon
causes them to be born. Verily, the moon is the door
of the S varga- world (heavenly world). Now, if a man
answer the moon (rightly) 1 2 , the moon sets liim free.
But if a man does not answer the moon, the moon
showers him down, having become rain, upon this earth.
And according to his deeds, and according to his know-
ledge, he is born again here as a worm, or as an
insect, or as a fish, or as a bird, or as a lion, or as a
boar, or as a serpent (?), or as a tiger, or as a man, or

1 See Bloomfield, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xv.
p. 168 ; Boehtlingk, JTMndogya-Upanishad, p, 92.

' J Cf. Boehtlingk, tlber eine bisher arg misaverstandene Stella
in der Elaushitaki-Brllhmawa-Upanishad.

JOURNEY OP THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 121

as somebody else in different places. But when he has
arrived, the moon asks him : “ Who art thou 1 ” And
he shall answer : “ 0 seasons 1 , the seed was brought
from the bright moon who was poured forth (in rain) ;
who consists of fifteen parts, who harbours our fathers 2 ;
raise me now in a vigorous man, and pour me through
a vigorous man into a mother.

“‘Then I am born as the twelfth or thirteenth
additional month through the twelve- or thirteen-fold
father (the year). I know that, I remember that.
0 seasons, bring me then to immortality. By this
truth and by this penance I am a season 3 , a child
of the seasons. I am thou.” Thereupon the moon
sets him free.

‘ Having reached the Path of the gods, he comes
to the world of Agni (fire), to the world of VAyu (air),
to the world of Varum, to the world of Indr a, to the
world of Prag&pati, to the world of Brahman. In
that world there is the lake Ara, the moments called
Yeshfiha, the river Vigara (ageless), the tree Ilya, the
city Salagya, the palace Aparagita (unconquerable),
the door-keepers Indra and Pragapati, the hall of
Br ahman , called Vibhu, the throne Vifcaksham (intel-
ligence), the couch Amitaugas (endless splendour), and
the beloved Manasi (mind), and her image Xakshushi
(eye), who, taking flowers, are weaving the worlds,
and the Apsaras, the Ambas (scriptures ?), and Amba-
yavis (understanding?), and the rivers Ambayas. To
this world he who knows this approaches. Brahman

1 Tlie seasons are sometimes called tlie brothers of Soma, the moon.

2 When only the fifteenth part is left of the moon, the Pitns
enter it. Ludwig takes the Rihhus also for the genii of the seasons.

3 The seasons are parts of the lunar year that seem to come and
go like the lives of mortal men.

122

LECTURE Y.

says , “ Run towards him with such worship as is due
to myself. He has reached the river Vkyara (ageless),
he will never age.”

4 Then five hundred Apsaras go towards him, one
hundred with fruit in their hands, one hundred with
ointments in their hands, one hundred with garlands
in their hands, one hundred with garments in their
hands, one hundred with perfumes in their hands.
They adorn him with an adornment worthy of
Brahman, and when thus adorned with the adornment
of Brahman, the knower of Brahman moves towards
Brahman. He (the departed) approaches the lake Ara.
and crosses it by the mind, while those who come to
it without knowing the truth, are drowned in it. He
comes to the moments called Yeshtfiha, and they flee
from him. He comes to the river Viyar&, and crosses
it by the mind alone, and then shakes off his good
and evil deeds 1 . His beloved relatives obtain the
good, his unbeloved relatives the evil he has done.
And as a man driving in a chariot, might look at the
two wheels, thus he will look at day and night, thus
at good and evil deeds, and at all pairs (correlative
things). Being freed from good and evil he, the
knower of Brahman, moves towards Brahman.

c He approaches the tree Ilya, and the odour of
Brahman reaches him. He approaches the city
S&lagrya, and the flavour of Brahman reaches him.
He approaches the palace Apar%ita, and the splen-
dour of Brahman reaches him. He approaches the
door-keepers Indra and Prayapati, and they run away
from him. He approaches the hall Vibhu, and the

1 Of. JTMnd. Up. VIII. 13.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 123

glory of Brahman reaches him. He approaches the
throne Vi/^aksha^a. The Saman verses, Br/hat and
Eathantara, are the eastern feet of that throne ; the
Saman verses, #yaita and Naudhasa, its western feet ;
the Saman verses, Vairupa and Vair%a, its sides,
lengthways ; the Saman verses, $&kvara and Raivata,
its sides, crossways. That throne is Pragma (know-
ledge), for by knowledge he sees clearly. He ap-
proaches the couch Amitauc/as. That is pra/na (breath,
speech). The past and the future are its eastern feet ;
prosperity and earth its western feet ; the Saman
verses, Brihat and Eathantara, are the two sides
lengthways of the couch ; the Saman verses, Bhadra
and Ya#/7&ya£/iliya, are the cross-sides at the head
and feet (east and west) ; the Bile and Saman are
the long sheets, the Yagnsthe cross-sheets, the moon-
beams the cushion, the Udgitha the coverlet; pros-
perity the pillow. On this couch sits Brahman, and
he who knows this, mounts it first with one foot.
Then Brahman says to him : “ Who art thou ? and he
shall answer: “I am a season, and the child of the
seasons, sprung from the womb of endless space, the
seed of the wife, the light of the year, the self of all
that is. Thou art the self of all that is ; what thou
art, that am I. 55 ’

Difficulties of Interpretation.

This is as close a translation as I can give. But I
must confess that many of the names here used in
describing the reception given by the god Brahman
to the departed, are unintelligible to me. They were
equally unintelligible to the native commentators, who,
however, try to discover a meaning in some of them,

124

LECTURE V.

as when they explain the lake Ara, which the departed
has to cross, as derived from Ari, enemy, these enemies
being the passions and inclinations of the heart. We
are told afterwards that those who come to that lake
without knowing the truth, are drowned in it. When
the throne, on which Brahman is seated, is called Vi-
Ziakshana, this seems to mean Intelligence, and Manasi
also is probably a personification of the mind of which
Ifakshushi, representing the eye, may well be called
the image. But there is such a mixture of symbolical
and purely picturesque language in all this, and the
text seems so often quite corrupt, that it seems hope-
less to discover the original intention of the poet, who-
ever he was, that first imagined this meeting between
the departed and the god Brahman. On some poifxts
we gain a little light, as, for instance, when we are
told that the departed, after having crossed the river
Vi$ara (the ageless) by his mind, shakes off* his good
and his evil deeds, and that he leaves the benefit of
his good deeds to those among his relatives who are
dear to him, while his evil deeds fall to the share of
his unbeloved relations. We also see more clearly
that the throne on which Brahman sits is meant for
Pray/?4 or wisdom, while the couch Amitaugas is iden-
tified with prana, that is breath and speech, and the
coverings with the Vedas,

Though there is a general likeness in these different
accounts of the fate of the soul after death, still we
see how each Upanishad has something peculiar to say
on the subject. In some the subject is treated very
briefly, as in the MumZaka-Upanishad L 2, 11, where
we are only told that the soul of the pious man passes
through the gate of the sun where the immortal Person

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 125

(spirit) dwells. In the ItViandogya-Upanishad VIII.
6, 5, one account is equally brief. Here we are told
that the soul departs upwards by the rays of the sun,
reaches the sun, which is the door to the worlds (loka)
for the wise, but a bar to the foolish. The Brihad-
ara^yaka also gives in one passage (V. 10, 1) a short
account of the soul’s journey from the body to the air,
from the air to the sun, from the sun to the moon,
from the moon to the painless world where the soul
dwells for eternal years. Similar short accounts
occur in Taitt. Up. I. 6, and Prasna Up. I. 9.

Historical Progress in tile ITpanisliaas.

If we look at the fuller accounts, w r e can easily
perceive that the earliest conception of life after death
was that represented by the Pitnyaoia, the Path of
the Fathers, that is, the path which led the soul to the
moon, where the Fathers, or those who have gone before
him, dwell. The description of this path is much the
same in the Brdiad-ara^yaka and in the JfMndogya-
Upanishad. The soul enters into smoke (probably of
the funeral pile), then comes to the night, then to the
waning half of the moon, then to the six months
when the sun moves towards the South. But it does
not reach the year, but moves straight to the abode
of the Fathers and to the moon. When this abode in
the moon came to be considered as temporary only,
and as followed by a new cycle of existences, it was
natural to imagine a Devay&na which led beyond
to the gods and to eternal happiness without any
return to new transmigrations. But this abode in the
Devaloka also did not satisfy all desires, and a further
progress was admitted from the sun to the moon, or

126

LECTURE Y.

direct from the sun to the abode of lightning, from
whence a spirit led the souls to the world of Brahman.
This world, though still conceived in mythological
phraseology, was probably for a long time the highest
point reached by the thinkers and poets of the Upa-
nishads, but we shall see that after a time even this
approach to a personal and objective God was not
considered final, and that there was a higher bliss
which could be reached by knowledge only, or by
the consciousness of the soul’s inseparateness from
Brahman. We see traces of this in passages of the
Upanishads such as Br£h. Ar. Up. Y. 4, 8, ‘ Wise
people who know Brahman go on this road (devayana)
to the heaven-world (s varga), and higher up from
thence, as quite freed.’ Or Maitr. Brahm. Up. YI. 30,
4 Stepping over the world of Brahman, they go by it
to the highest path.’

While to our minds the belief in the soul’s j ourney
to the world of the Fathers, the world of the gods, and
the world of the mythological Brahman (masc.), seems
to present an historical development, it was not so
with Ved&nta philosophers. They looked upon every
passage in the Upanishads as equally true, because
revealed, and they tried to combine all the accounts
of the soul’s journey, even when they clearly differed
from one another, into one harmonious whole.

Attempts to harmonise the different Statements of the
Upanishads.

How they achieved this, I shall best be able to
show you by translating some portion of the Vedanta-
shtras with the commentary by /Sankara. Though
some of it may seem tedious, yet it will be useful in

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

127

giving you some idea of the style and spirit of the
later Vedanta philosophers. You will observe how the
Sutras by themselves are almost unintelligible, though
we see, after reading Sankara’s comments, that they
really contain the gist of the whole argument.

VEDANTA-SUTKAS.

FOURTH ROOK, THIRD CHAPTER.

First Sutra.

On the road beginning with light , §c., because this is
widely recognised.

Sankara explains: From the beginning of the
journey (of the departed) the process, as stated, is the
same. But the actual journey is revealed differently
in different sacred texts. One, by means of the junction
of the arteries with the solar rays, is found in the
A/iand. Up. VIII. 6> 5, ‘ Then he mounts upwards by
those very rays.’ Another, beginning with the light
(ar&is) is found in Kkka d. Up. V. 10, 1, ‘ They go to
the light, from light to day/ Another occurs in the
Kaush. Up. I. 3, c Having reached the path of the
gods, he comes to the world of Agni, or fire/ Again,
another occurs in the Brill. Ar. V. 10, 1, c When the
person goes away from this world, he comes to the
wind/ And one more in the MuraZ. Up. I. 2, 11, says,
‘ They depart free from passions through the gate of
the sun/

Here then a doubt arises, whether these roads are really
different from each other, or whether it is one and the
same road, only differently described. It is assumed,
by way of argument, that they are different roads, be-

128

LECTUKE V.

cause they occur in theUpanishads under different heads
and belong to different kinds of religious meditation
(upasana) ; also because the limitation that he mounts
upward by these very rays, would be contradicted, if
we regarded what is said about light (ar/ds) and the
rest ; and the statement about the quickness, when it
it said, ‘as quickly as he sends off the mind x , he goes
to the sun/ would also be upset. If on these grounds
it is said that these roads are different from one
another, we reply: No, 1 * * * * 6 On the road beginning ivith
light ; 9 that is, We answer that every one who desires
Brahman, hastens on by the road that begins with the
light. And why? — Became that road is so widely
recognised . For that road is known indeed to all
sages. Thus it is saidln the chapter on the Five Fires,

‘ And those also, who in the forest worship the True
(i, e. Brahman) as faith/ &c., clearly proclaiming that
this road beginning with the light, is meant for those
also who practise other kinds of knowledge. This
might pass, we are told, and with regard to those
kinds of knowledge for which no road whatever is
mentioned, the road beginning with the light might
be admitted. But if another and another road are pro-
claimed, why should the road beginning with the light
be accepted? Our answer to all this is simply this.
This might be so, if these roads were entirely different,
but it is really one and the same road with different

1 The words sa y&vat kshipyen manas til vat are difficult to

translate. They are meant to express quickness (kshipratvam

from kship), wind, mind, and horse being the general representa-

tions of quickness, I had translated formerly, and 4 while Ins

mind is failing/ which Boolitlingk should not have adopted, ren-

dering it by ‘W&hrend das Denkorgan verschwindefc' ; but it is clear
that quickness, and not fainting, was intended, and it was bo
understood by the author of the Vechlnta-shtras.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

129

attributes, leading to the world of Brahman, and
sometimes determined by one, sometimes by another
predicate. For whenever one part has been recognised,
the relation should be that as between what determines
and what is to be determined \ and the various deter-
minations of the road must be summed up together,
just as we sum up the several attributes of a science
which is one and the same, though its treatments may
vary. And even if the subject (under which a certain
road to Brahman is taught) is different, the road is the
same, because its goal is the same, and because one part
of the road has been recognised (as the same). For in all
the following passages one and the same object, viz. the
obtainment of the Brahma- world, is clearly shown.
We read (Brib. Ar. VI. 2, *15): * In these worlds of
Brahman they dwell for ever and ever ; ’ — (Bnh. V.
10, 1): ‘There he dwells eternal years; 1 * * * 5 — (Kaush. I. 7) :
‘Whatever victory, whatever greatness belongs to
Brahman, that victory he gives, that greatness he
reaches \ — (K Aand. VIII. 4, 3) : ‘ That world of Brahman
belongs to those only who find it by Brahma&arya. 5
And if it is said that in admitting the approach to the
light, there would be no room for the restriction ex-
pressed in the words, ‘ By these very rays, 5 that is no
fault ; for its true object is the reaching of these rays.
The same word which includes the obtainment of
the rays, need not exclude the light, &c. Therefore
we must admit that this very union with the rays is
here emphasised. And what is said about the speed is

1 The technical meaning of ekadesa is a part, while ekadesin is

the whole. But the translation is unsatisfactory, nor does Pro-

fessor Deussen make the drift of the sentence clearer. The ekadesa

here is simply meant for the beginning and the end of the road.

(4) K

130

LECTBEE V.

not upset, if we confine ourselves to the road beginning
with light, for the object is quickness, as if it wer e
said, one gets there in the twinkling of an eye.

And the passage (Ehk nd. V. 1 0, 8) : £ On neither of
these two ways,’ which attests the third or the evil place
shows at the same time that besides the Pitny&wa
the road to the Fathers, there is but one other road'
the Devayana, the road to the Gods, one station of
which is the light. And if in the passage on the
light, the road-stations are more numerous, while
elsewhere they are less numerous, it stands to” reason
that the less numerous should bo explained in con-
formity with the more numerous. On these grounds
also the Sutra says, 'On the road beginning with
light, &c., because this is widely recognised.’

bECOND ttUTItA.

From the year to the wind , on account of the presence and
absence of determinants .

. ^kara explains : But by what peculiar combina-
tion or insertion can there be the mutual relation of
what determines (attributes), and what is determined
(subject) between the various attributes of the road?
The teacher out of kindness to us, combines them as
follows. By the KausMtaka (I. 3) the Devayana is
described m these words: ‘Ho, having reached the
path of the gods, comes to the world of Agni (fire), to
the world of VAyu (air), to the world of Vanina, to tho
wor d oflndra, to the world of Prac/apati (Vn%), to
the world of Brahman (Hirawyagarbha).’ Now here
e words light and world of Agni mean the same
thing, as both express burning, and there is no
necessity here for looking for any succession. But

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 131

Vayu (the wind) is not mentioned in the road
beginning with light, how then is he here to be
inserted ? The answer is : In the passage (Khk nd. Y.
10, 1) we read: ‘They go to the light, from light to
day, from day to the waxing half of the moon, from
the waxing half of the moon to the six months when
the sun goes to the North, from the six months when
the sun goes to the North to the year, from the year
to the sun.’ Here then they reach Vayu, the wind,
after the year and before the sun ; and why ? Because
there is both absence and presence of determinants.
For in the words, ‘He goes to the world of Vayu 5
(Kaush. I. 3), Vayu is mentioned without any deter-
minant, while in another passage a determinative
occurs, where it is said (Brzh. V. 10, 1): ‘When the
person goes away from this world, he comes to the
wind. Then the wind makes room for him, like the
hole of a wheel, and through it he mounts higher, he
comes to the sun/ Therefore from the determination,
showing the priority of Vayu before the sun, Vayu is
to be inserted between the year and the sun.

Why then, as there is a determination, showing his
following after light, is not Vayu inserted after light?
Because we see that there is no determination here.
But was there not a text quoted (Kaush. 1. 3) : ‘ Having
reached the path of the gods, he comes to the world of
Agni, to the world of Vayu/ Yes, but here the sooner
and later only is enunciated, but there is not a word
said about direct succession. A simple statement of
facts is here made, in saying that he goes to this and
to that, but in the other text a regular succession is
perceived, when it is said, that after having mounted
on high through an opening as large as the wheel of

132

LEGTUBE V.

a chariot, supplied by Vayu, he approaches the sun.
Hence it is well said in the Sutra, ‘ on account of the
presence and absence of determinants. 5

The Vapasaneyins (Brih. VI. 2, 15), however, say
that he proceeds from the months to the world of the
gods, and from the world of the gods to the sun.
Here, in order to maintain the continuity with the
sun, he would have to go from the world of the gods
to V&yu. And when the Sutra says, from the year
to V&yu, this was done on account of the text in the
JfMndogya. As between the V%asaneyaka and the
ZAandogya, the world of the gods is absent in the
one, the year in the other. As both texts have to be
accepted, the two have to be combined, and then
on account of the connection with the months, the
distinction has to be made that the year comes first,
the world of the gods last. (1) Year (KMn d.), (2)
World of gods (Bnh.), (3) World of V&yu (Kaush.),
(4) Sun (IMn d.).

Third Sutra.

Above the lightning Faruna, on account of the
connection.

Sankara explains : When it is said (Kh and. V. 10, 2) ;
"From the sun to the moon, from the moon to
lightning, 5 Varum is brought in so that above that
lightning he goes to the world of Varum. For there
is a connection between lightning and Varum, there
being a Brahmam which says: "When the broad
lightnings dance forth from the belly of the cloud
with the sound of deep thunder, the water falls down,
it lightens, it thunders, and it will rain. 5 But the
lord of water is Varum according to /Sruti and

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 133

Snmti. And above Varum follow Indra and Pra#a-
pati, because there is no other place for them, and
according to the meaning of the text. Also Yaruna,
&c., should be inserted at the end, because they are
additional, and because no special place is assigned to
them. As to the lightning, it is the last on the road
that begins with light.

Fourth Sutra.

They are conductors , because this is indicated.

$ankara explains : With regard to those beginning
with light there is a doubt, whether they are signs of
the road, or places of enjoyment, or leaders of travellers.
It is supposed at first that light and the rest are signs,
because the information has this form. For as in the
world a man wishing to go to a village or a town is
told, 4 Go from hence to that hill, then thou wilt come
to a fig-tree, then to a river, then to a village, then to
the town,’ thus he says here also, c From light to day,
from day to the waxing half of the moon/ Or it is
supposed that they are meant for places of enjoyment.
For he connects Agni and the rest with the word loka
(world), as when he says, he comes to the world of
Agni. And world is used for places of enjoyment of
living beings, as when they say, the world of men,
the world of the Fathers, the world of the gods. And
there is also a Brahmam which says ($at. Br. X. 2, 6,
8) : £ They remain fixed in the worlds which consist of
day and night/ Therefore light and the rest are
not conductors. Besides, they cannot be conductors,
because they are without intelligence. For in this
world intelligent men are appointed by the king to

134

LECTUBE V.

conduct those whom they have to conduct over
difficult roads.

In answer to all this we say : After all, they are
meant for conductors, because this is clearly indicated.
For we read: £ From the moon to the lightning;
there a person not being a man, leads them to Brah-
man," and this shows clearly their conductorship. If
you think that according to the rule that a sentence
says no more than what it says, this sentence, being
restricted to its own object (the person, not being a
man), falls to the ground, we say No, for the predicate
(amanava/i) is only intended to exclude his supposed
humanity. Only if with regard to light, &e., personal
conductors are admitted, and these human, is it right,
that in order to exclude this (humanity), there should
be the attribute, am&nava, not being a man.

If it is objected that a mere indication is not
sufficient, because there is no proof, we say there is
no fault in this.

Fifth Sutea.

Became as both are bewildered, this is right .

Sankara explains: Those who go on the road
beginning with light, as they are without a body, and
as all their organs are wrapt up, are not independent,
and the light, &c., as they are without intelligence, are
likewise not independent. Hence it follows that the
individual intelligent deities who represent light and
the rest, have been appointed to the conductorship.
For in this world also drunken or fainting people
whose sense-organs are wrapt up, follow a road as
commanded by others. Again, light and the rest cannot
be taken for mere signs of the road, because they are
not always there. For a man who dies in the night,

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH, 135

cannot come to the actual manifestation of the day.
For there is no waiting, as we said before. But as
the nature of the gods is eternal, this objection does
not apply to them. And it is quite right to call the
gods light and all the rest, because they represent
light and the rest. And the expression from light to
day, &c., is not objectionable if the sense of con-
ductorship is adopted, for it means, through the light,
as cause, they come to the day, through the day, as
cause, to the waxing half of the moon/ And such an
instruction is seen also in the case of conductors as
known in the world, for they say, Go hence to
Balavarman, thence to Gayasimha, thence to Knshwa-
gupta. Besides in the beginning, when it is said they
go to the light, a relation only is expressed, not a
special relation ; at the end, however, when it is said,
he leads them to Brahman, a special relation is
expressed, that between conducted and conductor.
Therefore this is accepted for the beginning also.
And as the organs of the wanderers are wrapt up
together, there is no chance of their enjoying anything,
though the word world (loka) may be applied to
wanderers also who do not enjoy anything, because
the worlds may be places of enjoyment for others who
dwell there. Therefore we must understand that he
who has reached the world of Agni is conducted by
Agni, and he who has reached the world belonging to
Vayu, by V&yu. But how, if we adopt this view that
they are conductors, can this apply to Varu^a and the
rest ? For above the hghtning Varu^a and the rest were
inserted, and after the lightning till the obtainment of
Brahman the leadership of the person who is not a man,
has been revealed. This objection is answered by

136

LECTURE V.

The Sixth Sutba.

From thence by him who belongs to the lightning , because
the Veda says so.

Sankara explains : It must be understood that from
thence, that is, after they have come to the lightning,
they go to the world of Brahman, having been con-
ducted across the worlds of VaruTia, &c., by the person
who is not a man, and who follows immediately after
the lightning. That he conducts them is revealed by
the words, ‘When they have reached the place of
lightning, a person, not a man 1 , leads them to the
world of Brahman’ (Br£h. VI. 2, 15). But Varuwa
and the rest, it must be understood, are showing their
kindness either by not hindering, or by assisting him.
Therefore it is well said that light and the rest are
the gods who act as conductors.

These extracts from Sankara’s commentary on the
Vedanta-sfttras, difficult to follow as they are, may serve
to give you some idea how almost impossible it is to
reduce the component parts of ancient sacred literature
to a consistent system, and how the Vedic apologists
endeavoured vainly to remove contradictions, and to
bring each passage into harmony with all the rest.
With us this difficulty does not exist, at least not to the
same degree. We have learnt that sacred books, like
all other books, have a history, that they contain the
thoughts of different men and different ages, and that
instead of trying to harmonise statements which vary
from each other, nay which even contradict each
other, we should simply accept them and see in them
1 Here amaruivafy but in the text m&nasaft.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

137

the strongest proof of the historical origin and genuine
character of these books. Br&hmanic theologians,
however, after once having framed to themselves an
artificial conception of revelation, could not shake off
the fetters which they had forged themselves, and
had therefore to adopt the most artificial contrivances
in order to prove that there was no variance, and no
contradiction between any of the statements contained
in the Veda. As they were convinced that every
word of their $ruti came direct from the deity, they
concluded that it must be their own fault, if they
could not discover the harmony of discordant utter-
ances.

Independent Statements in the Mantras.

It is strange, however, to observe that while so
great an effort is made to bring all the passages which
occur in the Upanishads into order and harmony,
hardly any attempt has been made to reconcile the
statements of the Upanishads with passages in the
hymns which allude to the fate of the soul after
death. These passages are by no means in harmony
with the passages in the Upanishads, nor are they
always in harmony with themselves. They are simply
the various expressions of the hopes and fears of
individual poets, and free, as yet, from the elaborate
details concerning the journey to the Fathers, to the
gods, and to Brahman with which the Upanishads
abound.

If we examine the hymns of the Big-veda we find
there the simple belief that those who have led a good
life go with a new and perfect body to the Fathers in
the realm of Yama ; Yama being originally a represen-

138

LECTURE V.

tative of the setting sun x , the first immortal, and after-
wards the first mortal, who entered the blessed abode
beyond the West. Thus in a hymn used at the
funeral, we read, Rv. X. 14, 7 2 :

4 Go forth, go forth on those ancient paths on which
our forefathers departed. Thou shalt see the two
kings delighting in Svadha (libation), Yama and the
god Varum.

4 Come together with the Fathers, and with Yama
in the highest heaven, as the fulfilment of all desires.
Having left all sin, go home again, and radiant in thy
body, come together with them/

Yama is never called the first of mortals except in
the Atharva-veda 3 . In the Rig-veda wo can still
clearly perceive his divine character, and its physical
substratum, the setting sun. Thus we read X. 14, 2:

‘Yama was the first to find the path for us, a
pasture that can never be taken from us, whither our
fathers have travelled formerly, being bom there,
each according to his ways/

That path of the departed (prapatha) is conceived
as dangerous, and Rushan’s protection is implored on
it (Rv. X. 17, 4). In one place a boat is spoken of for
crossing a river (X. 63, 10), two dogs also are men-
tioned which the departed has to pass. Another
verse introduces an entirely new thought. There
(Rv. X. 16, 3) we read :

'May the eye go to the sun, the breath to the
wind; go to the sky and the earth, as is right, or

1 According to Professor Hillebrandt, tho physical background
of Yama is the Moon, and not the nocturnal Sun. This is not
impossible.

2 Anthropological Religion, p. 250.

3 Ath.-veda XVIII. 3, 13, is a corruption of Rv. X. 14, 1.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 139

go to the waters, if it is good for thee there, rest in
the plants/

It has been supposed that some of the Yedic poets
placed the abode of the blessed not in the West but
in the East, but that depends simply on the right inter-
pretation of one passage, Rv. I. 115, 1, 2. Here
a sunrise is described, ‘The bright face of the gods
has risen, the eye of Mitra, Varuna, Agni ; it filled
heaven and earth and the air, the sun is the self of all
that moves and stands ;

‘ The sun goes from behind towards the Dawn, as a
man follows a woman, in the place where pious people
prolong the generations from happiness to happiness/

This last line has been translated in various ways,
but the general idea has always been that the pious
people are here as elsewhere meant for the departed 1 .
There is, however, no necessity for this interpretation.
I see in these words an idea often expressed in the
Yeda, that the pious worshippers prolong their lives
or their progeny by offering sacrifices to the gods in
the morning, the morning-sun being the symbol of
renewal and prolonged life. Anyhow, the abode of
Yama and of the departed is near the setting, not
near the rising of the sun.

The abode of the departed, however, is by no means
described as dark or dreary. At all events when
Soma, the moon, is implored to grant immortality, we
read (IX. 113, 7 ) :

4 Where there is imperishable light, in the world
where the sun is placed, in that immortal, eternal
world place me, 0 Soma !

1 Kaegi, Siebenzig Lieder , p. 55 ; Zimmer, Altind. Leben , p. 410.

140

LECTURE Y.

4 Where Vaivasvata (Yama) is king, where there is
the descent (or the interior) of heaven, where the over-
flowing waters are, there make me immortal, O Soma !

£ Where one moves as one listeth, in the third light,
the third heaven of heaven, where every place is full
of light, there make me immortal, 0 Soma !

4 Where there are all wishes and desires, where the
red sun culminates, where there are offerings and
enjoyment, there make me immortal, O Soma !

£ Where there are delights and pleasures, where joys
and enjoyments dwell, where the wishes of the heart
are fulfilled, there make me immortal, 0 Soma ! ’

It does not follow, however, that the abode of the
departed to which they are led by Soma, is always *
conceived in exactly the same manner. The poetic
fancy of the Vedic poets is still very free. Thus we
read in another hymn (I. 24, 1, 2) that Agni, the first
among the immortal gods, is to restore man to Aditi
(the infinite), where the son may see his father and
mother again. In another hymn (X. 15) the departed
are actually divided into different classes, as dwelling
either in the air, or on the earth, and in the villages.
Dirghatamas (I. 154, 5) speaks of the beloved place
of Vishmi, where pious men rejoice, as the abode of
the blessed. This place of Vishnu would be the place
where the sun culminates, not where it sets. Another
poet (X. 135, 1) speaks of a beautiful tree, where Yama
is drinking with the gods. In the Atharva-veda we
get still more details. There we read of milk-cows,
soft winds, cooling rain, cakes of ghee, rivers running
with milk and honey, and a large number of women,
all meant for the enjoyment of the departed.

It seems very strange that not one of these statements

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 141

regarding the fate of the soul after death which are
contained in the hymns of the Rig-veda, is discussed
in the Vedanta-sutras. No effort is made to bring
them into harmony with the teaching of the Upani-
shads. The same applies to many passages occurring
in the Brahma?ias, though they can claim the character
of Sruti or revelation with the same right as the
Upanishads, nay, from an historical point of view,
with even a better right. This is a point which native
Ved&ntists should take into consideration, befoi'e they
represent the Vedanta philosophy as founded on $ruti
or revelation in the general sense of that word.

Mythological language misunderstood.

Another weak point in the authors of the Vedanta-
sutras seems to me their inability to understand that
in the early periods of language it is impossible to
express any thought except metaphorically, hierogly-
phically, or, what is the same, mythologically. Ancient
sages think in images rather than in concepts. With
us these images have faded, so as to leave nothing
behind but the solid kernel. Thus when we speak
of approaching or drawing near to God, we do no
longer think of miles of road which we have to
traverse, or of bridges and lakes which we have to
cross. Nor when we speak of a throne of God do we
allow ourselves to picture a royal throne with legs
and supports and canopies. But with the ancient
speakers it was different. Their thoughts were not
yet free of the imagery of language. Their approach
to God could only be represented as a long journey
along steep roads and narrow bridges, and the throne
of God or Brahman was graphically described as

142

LECTURE V,

golden, and as covered with precious shawls and
cushions. We must say, however, to the credit
of the poets of the Upanishads that they soon began
to correct themselves. They tell us that the throne
of Brahman is not a golden throne, but is meant for
intelligence, while its coverings represent the sacred
scriptures or the Vedas. In the same way a river
which the soul in its journey to Brahman has to cross
is called Vi#ar&, that is, the Age-less; a man who
has crossed it, casts oft old age, and never grows old
again. He is supposed to have shaken off his good
and evil deeds, and to leave the benefit of the former
to those among his relatives on earth who were dear
to him, while his evil deeds fall to the share of his
unbeloved relations. A lake again which bars the
way to Brahman is called Am , and this name is
supposed to be derived from Ari } enemy, these enemies
being the passions and attachments of the heart, all
of which must be left behind before an entrance can
be found into the city of God, while those who do not
know the truth, are believed to be drowned in that
lake./

Even at present there are few, if any, among
the most enlightened students of Vedic literature in
India, who would admit the possibility of an historical
growth with regard to the Veda, and would not prefer
the most artificial interpretations to the frank ad-
mission that, like other sacred books, the Veda also
owes its origin to different localities, to different ages,
and to different minds.

Unless we learn to understand this metaphorical
or hieroglyphic language of the ancient world, we
shall look upon the Upanishads and on most of the

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 143

Sacred Books of the East as mere childish twaddle ;
but if we can see through the veil, we shall discover
behind it, not indeed, as many imagine, profound
mysteries or esoteric wisdom, but at all events in-
telligent and intelligible efforts in an honest search
after truth.

We must not imagine, however, that we can always
reach the original intention of mythological phrase-
ology, nor does it follow that the interpretation
accepted by Indian commentators is always the right
one. On the contrary, these native interpretations,
by the very authority which naturally might seem
to belong to them, are often misleading, and we must
try to keep ourselves, as much as possible, independent
of them.

In the circumstantial accounts, for instance, which
I read to you from some of the Upanishads as to the
return of the soul to Brahman, the soul rising with
the smoke of the funeral pile and reaching the night,
and then the waning half of the moon, and then the
six months during which the sun travels to the
South, and then only arriving in the world of the
Fathers, we find it difficult, if not impossible, to
connect any definite thoughts with these wanderings
of the soul. What can be meant by the six months
during which the sun travels to the South or to the
North ? It might seem to imply that the soul has to
tarry for six months while the sun is moving South,
before it can hope to reach the world of the Fathers
and the Moon. But this is by no means the inter-
pretation of native commentators. They are impressed
with a passage where it is said that the soul travels
onward with the quickness of thought, and they there-

144

EECTUBE Y.

fore would object to admit anything like delay in the
soul’s joining the northern or the southern progress
of the sun. They may be right in this, but they leave
the difficulty of the six months as a station in the
soul’s journey unexplained. I can only produce one
parallel that may perhaps throw some light on this
point.

It occurs in Porphyrius, Be Antro Afympharum.
This cave of the nymphs, mentioned by Homer (Odyss.
XIII. 104 ), was taken by Porphyrins and other
philosophers, such as Numenius and Cronius, as a
symbol of the earth with its two doors, —

< 5 vco 54 re ol Ovpai dcriv
at fJilv rrpbs Bopeao, mraiParal dv9pwTrot<nv y
at 5’ av irpbs N orov dal 6€&>T€pai m ov54 rt tcetvy
dv5pe$ kcrepxovrai, a\K* dOauaray 656$ kanv.

These doors of the cave have been explained as the
gates leading from and to the earth. Thus Porphyrins
says that there are two extremities in the heavens,
viz. the winter solstice, than which no part is nearer
to the South, and the summer solstice which is
situated next to the North. But the summer tropic,
that is the solstitial circle, is in Cancer, and the winter
tropic- in Capricorn. And since Cancer is the nearest
to the earth, it is deservedly attributed to the Moon,
which is itself proximate to the earth. But since
the southern pole by its greatest distance is incon-
spicuous to us, Capricorn is ascribed to Saturn, who
is the highest and most remote of all the planets * . .
Theologians admitted therefore two gates, Cancer and
Capricorn, and Plato also meant these by what he calk
the two mouths. Of these they affirm that Cancer is the
gate through which souls descend, but Capricorn that

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 145

through which they ascend [and exchange a material
for a divine condition of being]. And indeed the
gates of the cave which look to the South are with
great propriety said to be pervious to the descent of
men : but the northern gates are not the avenues of
the gods, but of souls ascending to the gods. On this
account the poet does not say it is the passage of the
gods, but of immortals, which appellation is also
common to our souls, which by themselves or by their
essence are immortal 1 .

The idea that the place to which the sun returns,
whether in its northward or southward progress, is a
door by which the souls may ascend to heaven, is at
least conceivable, quite as much as the idea which
Macrobius in the twelfth chapter of his comment on
Scipio’s dream ascribes to Pythagoras, who, as he tells
us, thought that the empire of Pluto began downwards
with the Milky Way, because souls falling from thence
appear already to have receded from the gods.

It should also be stated, as Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak
in his Researches into the antiquity of the Vedas re-
marks, that £ the summer solstice which begins the
southern passage of the sun is called the ayana of the
Pifrra, and that the first month or fortnight in this
ayana of the Pitris is pre-eminently the month or the
fortnight of the PitWs or the Fravashis or the Manes.
The Hindus, he adds, up to this day regard the dark
half of Ehadrapada as the fortnight of the Manes, and
likewise the Parsis whose year commenced with the
summer solstice, the first month of the year being
dedicated to the Manes. 5 (Geiger, Civilization of
East Iranians , vol. i. p. 153.)

1 See Aelian, Porphyrins , Philo , ed. Didot, p. 94, § 21. *

(4) L

146

LECTURE V.

He goes still further and calls attention to the fact
that, when the vernal equinox was in Orion, that
constellation, together with the Milky Way and Canis,
formed, so to speak, the boundary of heaven and hell,
the Devaloka and Yamaloka which, in Vedic works,
mean the hemispheres North and South of the equator.
This would also explain, he thinks, why heaven and
hell are separated by a river according to the Parsic,
the Greek, and the Indian traditions, and why the
four-eyed or three-headed dogs came to be at the
gates of hell to guard the way to Yama’s regions,
these being the constellations of Canis Major and
Minor. He undertakes to explain several more of
the ancient Vedic traditions by a reference to these
constellations, but he has hardly proved that these
constellations and their names as Canis Major and
Minor were known so early as the lime of the poets
of the Rig-veda.

Whatever may be uncertain in these speculations,
so much seems clear, that originally the place where
the sun turned on its northern course was conceived
as the place where the soul might approach the world
of the Fathers.

But it is the fate that awaits the soul while in the
moon that is most difficult to understand. For here
in the moon we are told the departed become the food
of the gods. The literal meaning is, they are eaten
by the gods, but the commentators warn us not to
take eating in its literal sonso, but in the more general
sense of assimilating or enjoying or loving. The
departed, they say, are not eaten by the Devas by
morsels, but what is meant is that they form the
delight of the gods, as food forms the delight of men.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

147

Nay, one commentator goes still further, and says.

£ If it is said that women are loved by men, they are
in being loved loving themselves. Thus these souls
also, being loved by the gods or Devas love the gods
in return, and are happy rejoicing with the Devas.’
This seems at first a rational explanation, and we
know that in the language of the New Testament
also eating and drinking or feeding on must be under-
stood in certain well-known passages in the sense of
receiving, enjoying, or loving.

Still this does not explain the whole of this legend,
and it is clear that some other mythological con-
ceptions of the moon must have influenced the
thoughts of the poets of the Upanishads. It was
evidently a familiar idea with the common people in
ancient India that the moon was the source of life
and immortality, and that it consisted of something
like the Greek nectar which gave immortality to the
gods. The waning of the moon was ascribed to this
consumption of Soma (moon-juice) by the gods, while
its waxing was accounted for by the entrance of the
departed spirits into the moon, the recognised abode
of the Fathers. If then after the moon was full again,
the gods were supposed to feed on it once more, it is
conceivable that the gods should be supposed to be
feeding on the souls of the departed that had entered
into the moon 1 . I do not mean to say that this
explanation is certain, nor is it hinted at by the
commentators of the Upanishads, but it is at all events
coherent and intelligible, which is more than can be
said of $ankara’s interpretation.

It is not impossible, however, that some older

1 See Hillebrandt, Vedisciie Mythologies Vol. i. p. 394.

L 2

148

LECTURE Y.

mythological conceptions of the moon may have in-
fluenced the thoughts of the poets of the Upanishads.
It is not in India only that the moon was looked
upon as a symbol of life and immortality. When
people counted by moons, the moon became naturally
the source and giver of life. People asked for more
moons, they lived so many moons, so that moon and
life became almost synonymous. Next, as to the
idea of immortal life after death, this was seen
symbolised in the waning or dying of the moon and
in the resurrection of the new moon. Traces of this
have been discovered even among the lowest races,
such as the Hottentots, who have a well-known
legend of the moon sending a messenger to men to
tell them, c As I die and dying live, so shall ye also
die and dying live V

By combining these two conceptions, people were
easily led on to the idea that as the departed went to
the moon, and as the moon increased and decreased,
they also increased and decreased with the moon.
Then again, there was in India another tradition that
the moon, the giver of rain and fertility, constituted
the favourite food of the gods, so that it required no
more than a combination of these traditions to arrive
at the saying that, during the waning half, the gods fed
on the departed who were dwelling in the moon. Some
of these thoughts are expressed in the Rv. X. 85 , 19 :

Uava/i navfifr bhavati gKynm&nak
A Imam ketu/i ufthds&m oti agram
Bhilgam devobhya/t vi dadluUi fi-yan
Pra A-anctrama/i tirato dirglulm ttyuh.

‘He (the moon) becomes new and now when born ; tho light of
days, h© goes at the head of tho dawns ; when ho arrives, ho dis-
tributes to the gods their share, tho moon prolongs a long life/

1 Selected Essays, i. p. 010.

JOUBNEY OF THE BOUT AFTEE DEATH. 149

Here it is clear that the moon is considered as the
source and giver of life, particularly of a long life,
while the share which he distributes to the gods may
mean either the sacrificial share for each god, which
is determined by the moon, as the regulator of seasons
and sacrifices, or the rain as the support of life,
which is supposed to come from the moon and to be
almost synonymous with it.

I do not maintain that all these ideas were clearly
present to the minds of the authors of the XJpani-
shads. I only suggest that they formed the component
elements of that legendary language in which they
expressed their doctrines, trusting that they would be
understood by the people to whom their doctrines
were addressed.

We now come to a new phase of half-legendary,
half-philosophical speculation.

TBe Devayana or Path, of the G-o&s.

The souls of those who form the delight of the
gods, or who enjoy the company of the gods and
Fathers while dwelling in the moon, are said to have
reached this blessedness by their pious works, by
sacrifice, charity, and austerity, not by real know-
ledge. Hence, when they have enjoyed the full
reward of their good works they are supposed to
return again to this life, while those who have
acquired true knowledge, or what we should call true
faith, do not return, but press forward till they reach
Brahman, the Supreme God. This they achieve by the
Devay&na or the Path of the Gods, as distinct from
the Pitriya/na, or the Path of the Fathers. For those
who have discovered this Path of the gods that leads

150

LECTURE V.

to Brahman, and which can be discovered by know-
ledge only, there is no return, that is to say, they are
not born again. To be born again and to enter once
more into the vortex of cosmic existence is to the
authors of the Upanishads the greatest misfortune that
can possibly be conceived. The chief object of their
philosophy is therefore how to escape from this cosmic
vortex, how to avoid being born again and again.

It seems to me that, if we take all this into account,
we can clearly distinguish three successive stages in
the thoughts which the authors of the Upanishads
formed to themselves as to the fate of the soul after
death. In the Upanishads themselves these different
theories stand side by side. No attempt is made to
harmonise them, till we come to the Ved&nta philo-
sophers, who looked upon all that is found in the
Veda as one complete revelation. But if we may
claim the liberty of historical criticism, or rather of
historical interpretation, we should ascribe the simple
belief in the so-called Pitriyam, the path of the
Fathers, and the journey of the soul to the moon, as
the home of the Fathers, to the earliest period. It is
no more than a popular belief, which we find else-
where also, that the soul will go where the Fathers
went, and that their abode is, not in the sun, but in
the moon, the luminary of the dark night.

Then came the new idea that this happy life with
the gods and the Fathers in the moon was the reward
for good works on earth, and that the reward for these
good works must after a time become exhausted.
What then ? If in the meantime the concept of One
Supreme God, of an objective Brahman, had been
gained, and if it had been perceived that true blessed-

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER HEATH.

151

ness and immortality consisted, not in such half-
earthly enjoyments as were in store for the departed
in the moon, and must after a time come to an end,
but in an approach to and an approximative know-
ledge of the Supreme Being, the conclusion followed
by itself that there must be another path besides that
of the Fathers leading to the moon, namely the path
of the gods (Devayana), leading through different
worlds of the gods, to the throne of Brahman or the
Supreme God. That road was open to all who had
gained a true knowledge of Brahman, and even those
who for a time had enjoyed the reward of their good
works in the moon might look forward after having
passed through repeated existences to being born
once more as human beings, gaining in the end a
true knowledge of the One Supreme God, and then
proceeding on the path of the gods to the throne
of the Supreme Deity, whether they call it Brahman,
Hirawyagarbha, or any other name, from whence
there is no return.

We shall see, however, that even this was not final,
but that there followed afterward a third phase of
thought, in which even this approach to the throne of
God was rejected as unsatisfactory. But before we
proceed to consider this, we have still to dwell for a
few moments on what was supposed to be the fate of
the souls, when they had to leave the moon and to
enter on a new course of being born and reborn, till
at last they gained complete freedom from cosmic
existence through a truer knowledge of God.

Metempsychosis.

This is a curious and important chapter, because we
,ean clearly discover in it the first beginnings of a

152

LECTUBE V.

belief in Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of
souls. The ancients were convinced that this belief
came from the East, and they imagined that Pytha-
goras and others could have got their belief in
Metempsychosis from India only. We saw how little
foundation there was for this, and it can easily be
shown that a belief in the transmigration of souls
sprang up in other countries also, which could not
possibly have been touched by the rays of Indian or
Greek philosophy. But it is interesting nevertheless
to watch the first beginnings of that belief in India,
because we have here to deal with facts, and not
with mere theories, such as have been started by
recent students of Anthropology as to the origin of
Metempsychosis. They consider that a belief in the
migration of souls, particularly the migration of
human souls into animal bodies, has something to do
with what is called Animism. Now Animism is a
very useful word, if only it is properly defined. It is
a translation of the German Beseelung , and if it is
used simply as a comprehensive term for all attempts
to conceive inanimate objects as animate subjects,
nothing can be said against it. There is, how r ever,
a very common mistake which should be carefully
guarded against. When travellers meet with tribes
that speak of trees or stones as sentient beings, and
attribute to them many things which of right belong
to animate or human beings only, we are told that
it is a case of Animism, No doubt, it is. But is not
Animism in this case simply another name for the
belief that certain inanimate objects are animate?
It may sound more learned, but of course, the name
explains nothing. What we want to know is how

JOUKNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 153

human beings, themselves animate, could be so mis-
taken as to treat inanimate things as animate. Even
animals seldom mistake a lifeless thing for a living
thing. I believe that this tendency of the human
mind to attribute life and soul to lifeless and soulless
objects, can be and has been accounted for by a more
general tendency, nay, by what may almost be called
a necessity under which the human mind is laid by
human language, which cannot form names of any
objects except by means of roots, all of which are
expressive of acts. It was impossible to name and
therefore to conceive the sun or the moon, or a tree
or even a stone, except as doers of something, which
something is expressed in one of those four or five
hundred roots that formed the capital of language.
This, which has been called Energism, is the highest
generalisation, and comprehends, and at the same
time accounts for Animism, Personification, Anthropo-
morphism, Spiritism, and several other isms .

But the question now before us is this, Did a belief
in Transmigration of souls have anything to do with
Animism, or that general belief that not only animals
have souls like men, but that inanimate objects also
may be inhabited by souls'? for it must be remem-
bered that from the very first Metempsychosis meant
the migration of the souls, not only into animals, but
likewise into plants.

Whatever may have been the origin of a belief in
Metempsychosis in other parts of the world, in India,
at all events so far as we may judge by the TJpani-
shads, this belief had nothing to do with the ordinary
Animism. Its deepest source seems to have been
purely ethical. The very reason why the soul, after

154

LECTURE V.

having dwelt for some time in the world of the
Fathers, had to be bom again was, if you remember,
that the stock of its good works had been exhausted.
Let us hear then what the ancient Hindus thought
would happen to the soul after its descent from the
moon. Here we must be prepared again for a great
deal of childish twaddle; but you know that philo-
sophers, to say nothing of fond fathers and grand-
fathers, are able to discover a great deal of wisdom
even in childish twaddle. The soul, we read in the
Upanishads, returns through ether or through space,
and then descends to the earth in the form of rain.
On earth something that has thus been carried down
in the rain, becomes changed into food. This food,
it is said, is offered in a new altar-fire, namely in
man, and thence born of a woman, that is to say,
man eats the food and with it the germs of a new
life. These germs are invisible, but according to the
Upanishads, not the less real.

Beality of Invisible Things.

This belief in invisible realities is fully recognised in
the Upanishads. It applied not only to the invisible
agents in nature, their Devas or gods, whom they
carefully distinguished from their visible manifesta-
tions. They believed in a visible Agni or fire who
performed the sacrifice, but they carefully distin-
guished him from the invisible and divine Agni who
was hidden in the dawn, in the mom, nay even in
the two fire-sticks, unseen by any human eye, but
ready to appear, when the priests had properly
rubbed the fire-sticks. The same belief gave them
their clear concept of the soul, never to be seen or

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 155

to be touched, yet more real to them than anything
else. Lastly their belief in something invisible that
constituted the life of every part of nature, meets us
on every page of the Upanishads. Thus we read in
the iT/iandogya-Upanishad a dialogue between a son
and his father, who wants to open the eyes of his
son as to the reality of the Unseen or the Infinite in
nature, which is also the Unseen and Infinite in man,
which is in fact both Brahman and Atman, the Self :

The father said : £ My son, fetch me a fruit of the
fig-tree.’

The son replied : ‘ Here is one, sir.’

4 Break it,’ said the father.

The son replied: c It is broken, sir.’

The father : e What do you see there ? ’

The son : c These seeds, almost infinitesimal.’

The father : c Break one of them.’

The son : c It is broken, sir.’

The father : £ What do you see there ? ’

The son: c Not anything, sir.’

The father: c My son, that subtle essence, which
you do not see there, of that very essence this great
fig-tree exists.’

£ Believe it, my son. That which is the invisible,
subtle essence, in it all that exists, has its self. It
is the True, it is the Self, and thou, 0 son, art it.’

If people have once arrived at this belief in subtle,
invisible germs, their belief in the germs of living
souls descending in rain and being changed into
grains of corn, and being, when eaten, changed into
seed, and at last being born of a mother, whatever we,
as biologists, may think of it, is not quite so un-
meaning metaphysically as it seems at first sight.

156

LECTURE V.

But while in this case we have only a transmigration
of the human soul across rain and food into a new
human body, we find in another passage (JfMndogya
V. 10, 3) far more minute details. Here we are told
that the rain which carries the soul back to earth is
taken up into rice, barley, herbs of every kind, trees,
sesamuxn, or beans. It is very difficult to escape
from these vegetable dwellings, and whoever the
persons may be that eat this food and afterwards
beget offspring, the germ of the soul, becomes like
unto them. And yet we are told that everything
is not left to accident, but that those whose conduct
has been good will quickly attain a good birth in
the family of Brahman as or Kshatriyas or Vaisyas,
while those whose conduct has been bad, will quickly
attain an evil birth in the family of a ITara&la, an
outcast, or, — and here we come for the first time on
the idea of a human soul migrating into the bodies
of animals, — he will become a dog or a hog. I think
we can clearly see that this belief in a human soul
being reborn as an outcast, or as a dog or a hog,
contains what I called an ethical element. This is
very important, at least as far as an explanation of
the idea of metempsychosis in India is concerned.
Whatever the influence of Animism may have been in
other countries in suggesting a belief in metempsy-
chosis, in India it was clearly due to a sense of moral
justice. As a man, guilty of low and beastly acts,
might be told even in this life that he was an out-
cast, or that he was a dog or a hog, so the popular
conscience of India, when it had once grasped the
idea of the continued existence of the soul after death,
would say in good earnest that he would hereafter

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH* 157

be an outcast or a dog or a hog. And after this idea
of metempsychosis had once been started, it soon
set the popular mind thinking on all the changes and
chances that might happen to the soul in her strange
wanderings. Thus we read that the soul may incur
great dangers, because while the rain that falls from
the moon (retodhaA) on the earth, fructifies and
passes into rice, corn, and beans, and is eaten and
then born as the offspring of the eater, some of the
rain may fall into rivers and into the sea, and be
swallowed by fishes and sea-monsters. After a time
they will be dissolved in the sea, and after the sea-
water has been drawn upwards by the clouds, it may
fall down again on desert or dry land. Here it may
be swallowed by snakes or deer, and they may be
swallowed again by other animals, so that the round
of existences, and even the risk of annihilation
become endless. For some rain-drops may dry up
altogether, or be absorbed by bodies that cannot be
eaten. Nay, even if the rain has been absorbed and
has become rice and corn, it may be eaten by children
or by ascetics who have renounced married life, and
then the chance of a new birth seems more distant than
ever. Fortunately the soul, though it is conscious
in its ascent, is supposed to be without consciousness
in its descent through all these dangerous stages.
The Brahmans have always some quaint illustrations
at hand. The soul is like a man, they say, who. in
climbing up a tree is quite conscious, but on falling
headlong down a tree loses his consciousness. Well,
in spite of all this folly or childish twaddle, there are
nevertheless some great thoughts running through it
all. First of all, there is the unhesitating belief that

158

LECTURE V.

the soul does not die when the body dies ; secondly,
there is the firm conviction that there is a moral
government of the world, and that the fate of the
soul hereafter is determined by its life here on earth,
to which was soon added as an inevitable corollary,
that the fate of the soul here on earth, must have
been determined by its acts of a former life. All
these thoughts, particularly on their first spontaneous
appearance, are full of meaning in the eyes of the
student of religion, and there are few countries where
we can study their spontaneous growth so well as in
ancient India.

Absence of Hells.

This belief in metempsychosis accounts for the ab-
sence of hells as places of punishment, at least in the
earlier phases of the Upanishads. A difference is made
between souls that only pass through the manifold
stages of animal and vegetable life in order to be bom
in the end as human beings, and those who are made to
assume those intermediate forms of rice and com and
all the rest as a real punishment for evil deeds. The
latter remain in that state till their evil deeds arc com-
pletely expiated, and they have a real consciousness of
their state of probation. But when their debts are
paid and the results of their evil deeds are entirely
exhausted, they have a new chance. They may
assume a new body, like caterpillars when changed
into butterflies. Even then the impressions of their
former misdeeds remain, like dreams. Still in the
end, by leading a virtuous life they may become men
once more, and rise to the world of the Fathers in
the moon. Here a distinction is made, though not

JOUENEY OF THE SOUL AETEE DEATH. 159

very clearly, between those whom the moon sets free
and those whom he showers down for a new birth.
Those who can answer the moon well, and assert
their identity with the moon, as the source of all
things, are set free to enter the Svargaloka by the
Path of the gods. Those who cannot, return to the
earth, may in time gain true knowledge, and finally
likewise reach the Path of the gods and the world
of the Devas, the home of the lightnings, and the
throne of Brahman. Some of the later Upanishads,
particularly the KausMtaki-Upanishad, enter into far
fuller details as to this last journey to the throne of
Brahman. But, as is generally the case, though there
may be some rational purpose in the general plan,
the minor details become almost always artificial and
unmeaning.

Now, however, when the soul has reached the
world of the gods and the abode of Brahman, from
whence there is no return to a new circle of cosmic
existence, a stream of new ideas sets in, forming a
higher phase philosophically, and probably a later
phase historically, as compared with the Path of the
Fathers and the Path of the Gods. We are introduced
to a dialogue, similar to that between the soul and the
moon, but now between the departed, standing before
the throne of Brahman, and Brahman himself.

Brahman asks him : c Who art thou ? 5

And he is to answer in the following mysterious
words :

£ I am like a season, and the child of the seasons,
sprung from the womb of endless space, sprung from
light. This light, the source of the year, which is the
past, which is the present, which is all living things

160

LECTURE V.

and all elements, is the Self. Thou art the Self, and
what thou art, that am If

The meaning of this answer is not quite clear. But
it seems to mean that the departed when asked by
Brahman what he is or what he knows himself to be,
says that he is like a season 1 , that is, like something
that comes and goes, but that he is at the same time
the child of space and time or of that light from which
all time and all that exists in time and space proceeds.
This universal source of all existence he calls the Self,
and after proclaiming that Brahman before him is that
Self, he finishes his confession of faith, by saying,
4 What thou art, that am If

In this passage, though, we still perceive some traces
of mythological thought, the prevailing spirit is clearly
philosophical. In the approach of the soul to the throne
of Brahman we can recognise the last results that can
be reached by Physical and Anthropological Religion,
as worked out by the Indian mind. In Brahman sit-
ting on his throne we have still the merely objective
or cosmic God, the highest point reached by Physical
Religion ; in the soul of the departed standing face to
face with God, we see the last result of Anthropological
Religion. We see there the human soul as a subject,
still looking upon the Divine Soul as an object. But
the next step, represented by the words, 4 What them
art , that am Jf opens a new vista of thought. The
human soul, by the very fact that it has gained true
knowledge of Brahman, knows that the soul also is
Brahman, recovers its own Brahmahood, becomes in
fact what it always has been, Brahman or the Universal
Self. Knowledge, true knowledge, self-knowledge

1 The Sufi also calls himsolf the son of the season, see p. 357.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 161

suffices for this, unci there is no longer any necessity
of toilsome travellings, whether on the Path of the
Fathers or on the Path of the Gods.

Transmigration as conceived in the Laws of Mann.

Before, however, we enter on a consideration of this
highest flight of Indian philosophy, and try to discover
to what phases of thought this similarity or rather this
oneness with God, this Homoiosis or Henosis, corre-
sponds in other religions, we have still to dwell for a
short time on the later development of the theory of
transmigration as we find it in the Laws of Mann and
elsewhere, and as it is held to the present day by
millions of people in India. These Laws of Mann are,
of course, much later than the Upanishacls. Though
they contain ancient materials, they can hardly, in
their present metrical form, be assigned to a much
earlier date than about the fourth century A. D. In their
original form they must have existed as Sutras ; in
their present metrical form, they belong to the A?loka-
period of Indian literature. There existed many
similar collections of ancient laws and customs, com-
posed both in Sutras and afterwards in metre, but as
the Laws of Manu, or, as they ought to be more cor-
rectly called, the Laws of the M&navas, have acquired
a decided pre-eminence in India, it is in them that we
can best study the later development of the belief in
metempsychosis.

As I said before, when the idea of the migration of
the soul through various forms of animal and vege-
table life had once been started, the temptation was
great to carry it out in fuller detail. Whereas in the
ITpanishads we are only told that a man who has led
(4) M

162

LECTURE V.

an evil life, attains an evil birth, and may actually
come to life again as a dog or a hog, Manu is able to
tell us in far more minute detail what particular birth
is assigned to any particular crime. Thus we read in
V. 164, IX. 30, that a wife who has violated her duty
towards her husband is born as a jackal. In another
passage (VI. 63) we read of ten thousand millions of
existences through which the soul passes after it has
left this body. A Brahma^a, we are told (XL 25), who
has begged any property for a sacrifice, and does not
use the whole of it for the sacrifice, but keeps some of
it for himself, becomes for a hundred years a vulture
or a crow. In the last book of Manu this subject is
most fully treated. We read there, XII. 39:

I will briefly declare in due order what transmigra-
tions in the whole world a man obtains through each
of the three qualities. These qualities have been
defined before (35-37) as darkness, activity , and
goodness.

Tlie Three Qualities — Bareness, Activity, and Goodness. *

Acts of darkness are those of which a man feels
ashamed.

Acts of activity or selfishness are those by which a
man hopes to gain profit or fame in the world, but of
which he need not feel ashamed. They may be called
selfish acts, but, from a moral point of view, they are
indifferent.

Acts of goodness are when a man desires knowledge,
with his whole heart, and his soul rejoices, and there
is no sense of shame.

Manu then continues ;

Those endowed with goodness reach the state of
gods, those endowed with activity the state of men.

JOUENEY OF THE SOUL AFTEB DEATH. 163

and those endowed with darkness sink to the condi-
tion of beasts ; this is the threefold course of trans-
migration. But know this threefold course of trans-
migration that depends on the three qualities to be
again threefold, low, middling, and high, according to
the particular nature of the acts and of the knowledge
of each man.

The 3STine Classes.

Immovable beings, insects both small and great,
fishes, snakes, tortoises, cattle, and wild animals are
the lowest condition to which the quality of darkness
leads.

Elephants, horses, $udras, and despicable barbarians,
lions, tigers, and boars are the middling states caused
by the quality of darkness.

/iarawas (probably wandering minstrels and jug-
glers), Suparaas (bird-deities) and hypocrites, Raksha-
sas*and Pisa/sas (goblins) belong to the highest rank
of conditions among those produced by darkness.

Dallas, MaJlas, Natfas, men who subsist by despic-
able occupations and those addicted to gambling and
drinking form the lowest order of conditions caused
by activity.

Kings and Kshatriyas (noblemen), the domestic
priests of kings, those who delight in the warfare of
disputants constitute the middling rank of the states
caused by activity.

The Gandharvas, Guhyakas, and the servants of the
gods, likewise the Apsaras, belong to the highest rank
of conditions produced by activity.

Hermits, ascetics, Brahma^as, the crowds of the
Vaimanika deities (spirits moving in mid-air on their

166

LECTUEE V.

through a large number of years through dreadful
hells, obtain after the expiration of that term of
punishment, the following births :

c The slayer of a Brahma?ia enters the womb of a
a pig, a camel, a cow, a goat, a sheep, a deer,
a bird, a UTa^cZala, and a Pukkasa. 5

Here we have clearly the idea of punishment in
h e P> apart from the punishment entailed by simply
being born again as a low animal. And what is
curious is that Yama, who at first was only conceived
as < Hie ruler among the departed, as a kind deity
with whom the Pitns enjoyed themselves, is now
mentioned as inflicting torments on the wicked (XII.
17), a part which he continues to act in the later
literature of India.

Hi the hymns of the Rig-veda we find very little
fmtt could be compared to the later ideas of hell.
;r or is there any reason to suppose, as both Roth and
Weber seem to do, that the V edic Indians had realised
the idea of annihilation, and that they believed anni-
ilation to be the proper punishment of the wicked.
As they spoke of the abode of the blessed in very
genera] terms as the realms of light, they speak of the
Jacked as being thrown or falling into karta, a pit
(Hw II. 09 , 6; IX. 73, 8-9). They also speak of a
ee P place (padam gabhiram, IY. 5, 5) and of lower
ar kness (adharam tama h, X. 152, 4) as their abode.
There are some more passages in the Rig-veda
which may refer to punishment after death. Thus
we read (II. 29, 6), 5 Protect us, 0 gods, from being
evoured by the wolf, or from falling into the pit/
j n< l a gain (IX. 73, 8-9), 'The wise guardian of the
aw is not | De d ece i ve( j. ^ k as placed purifiers

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 167

(conscience) in the heart ; he knowing looks upon all
things, and hurls the wicked and lawless into the
pit/

In the Atharva-veda the description of the abode
of the wicked becomes more and more minute. We
read (II. 14, 3) of a house (griha) for evil spirits, and
even the modem name of Naraka for hell occurs in
it. All this agrees with what we know from other
sources of the chronological relation of Yedic hymns,
Upanishads, and Manus Laws. The Upanishads speak
of a third path, besides the two paths that lead to the
Fathers and to the Gods, and they say (BWh. Ar. VI. 2,
16) : £ Those who do not know these two paths become
worms, birds and creeping things. 5 We also read in
some Upanishads, that there are unblessed or asurya
worlds, covered with blind darkness whither fools go
after death. The Brahman as are sometimes more
explicit in their accounts of hell \ and in one passage
of the Satapatha Brahmam (XI. 7, 2, 33), we actually
find a mention of the weighing of the soul, a concep-
tion so well known from Egyptian tombs.

Bridges.

The more we advance, the fuller the details become
about the two roads, the road leading to the PitWs
and the road leading to the Devas. I shall here call
your attention to one passage only in the Mah&bha-
rata which is highly important, because the two roads
are here for the first time 2 called Setus, or bridges (Anu-

1 Weber, Z. D. M. (?., ix. p. 240.

2 How familiar the idea of a bridge between this world and the
next must ha^e been in Yedic times also, is shown by the frequent
allusions to the Atman, as the true bridge from Sohein to Sein;
iTMnd. Up. VIII. 4, 1, &c.

168

LECTURE Y.

git&, XX. p. 816), bridges of virtue or piety. It was
generally supposed that the idea of a bridge connect-
ing this world with the next was peculiar to Persia,
where the famous Ainvatf bridge forms so prominent
a feature in the ancient religion. But the relation
between the Veda and the A vesta is so peculiar and so
intimate, that we can hardly doubt that the belief in
bridges between this world and the next was either
borrowed directly by the Persians from the Vedic
poets, or that it was inherited by both from their
common ancestors. It is quite true that the same idea
of a bridge between this and the next world occurs
in other countries also, where a direct influence of
Indian thought is out of the question, as, for instance,
among some North- American Indians \ But it is not
a bridge of virtue or of judgment as in India and
Persia. The idea of a bridge or a mere communica-
tion between this and the next world is in fact so
natural that it may be called the easiest and probably
the earliest solution of the problem with which, though
from a higher point of view, we are occupied in this
course of lectures, the relation between the natural and
the supernatural. When people had once learnt to
believe in a Beyond, they felt a gap between the here
and the there, which the human mind could not brook,
and which it tried, therefore, to bridge over, at first
mythologically, and afterwards philosophically. The
earliest, as yet purely mythological, attempt to connect
the world of men and the world of the gods is the belief
in a bridge called Bi frost, lit. trembling rest, such as
we find it in Northern mythology. It was clearly in-

1 Jones, Traditions of the North* American Indians e, vol. i. p. 227.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 169

tended originally for the rainbow. We are told that
it was created by the gods, and was called the bridge
of the Ases or the gods, the As-bru. It had three
colours, and was supposed to be very strong. But
however strong it was, it is believed that it will
break at the end of the world, when the sons of
Muspel come to ride across it. The Ases or gods
ride every day across that bridge to their judgment
seat near the well of Urd. It has a watchman also,
who is called Heimdall.

This is a purely mythological expedient to connect
heaven and earth, for which Physical Beligion chose
very naturally the emblem of the rainbow.

In India and Persia, however, the case is different.
First of all the bridge there is not taken from any-
thing in nature. It is rather an ethical postulate.
There must be a way, they argued, on which the
soul can approach the deity or by which it can be
kept away from the deity, — hence they imagined that
there was such a way. That way in India was the
Road of the Fathers and afterwards the Road of the
Gods. Put it is very important to observe that in
India also this road (yana) was called setu, bridge,
though it had not yet received a proper name. In
the Veda, Rv. I. 38, 5, the path of Yama is mentioned,
which is really the same as the Road of the Fathers,
for Yama was originally the ruler of the Fathers. If
therefore the poets say, Ha vo ^arita patha Yamasya
gad upa, May your worshipper not go on the path of
Yama, they simply mean, may he not yet die. When
there was once a bridge, a river also would soon be
imagined which the bridge was to cross. Such a
river, though it does not occur in the hymns, occurs

170

LECTURE Y.

in the Br&hma^as tinder the name of Yaitara^t, which
simply means ‘what leads on or what has to be crossed/
It is probably but another name for the river Vh/ara,
the ageless, which, as we saw in the TJpanishads, the
departed had to pass.

You may remember that at the funeral ceremonies
of the Vedic Indians a cow (Anustara-nl) had to be
sacrificed. This cow was supposed to carry the de-
parted across the Vaitara ni river, and later it became
the custom in India, and, I am told, it is so now, to
make a dying man lay hold of the tail of a cow,
or, as among the Todas, of the horns of a buffalo.
But though in India the belief in a Road of the
Bathers and a Road of the Gods seems to have arisen
from a moral conviction that there must be such a
path to lead the departed, whether as a reward or as
a punishment, to the world of the Fathers, and to the
world of the Gods, that path was identified in India
also not only with the rainbow, but likewise, as Pro-
fessor Kuhn has tried to show (. K . Z ii. p. 318), with
the Milky Way. In the Vishmi-puram (p. 227) the
Devayana is placed north of Taurus and Aries, and
south of the Great Bear, which is the exact situation
of the starting-point of the Milky Way. Professor
Kuhn has pointed out a most curious coincidence.
Let us remember that in order to reach the Devay&na,
supposed to be the Milky Way, the departed had to
be carried across the Vaitara^i river by a cow. Is it
not strange that in the North of Germany to the
present day the Milky Way should be called Kaupat,
that is, cow-path, and that the Slavonians should call
it Mavra or Mavriza, which means a black speckled
cow. Nay, in the poem of Tundalus (ed. Hahn, pp.

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. XT'!

49-50), we read that the soul has to drive a stolen
cow across that bridge. Such coincidences are very
startling. One hardly knows how to account for
them. Of course, they may be due to accident,
but, if not, what an extraordinary pertinacity would
they show even in the folklore of the Aryan nations.

However, though in some places the Devayana has
been identified with the Milky Way, in others and
more ancient passages it was clearly conceived as the
rainbow, as when we read in the Bn-had-ara-nyaka
Upanishad IY. 4, 8:

c The small, old path stretching far away (vitataA
or vitara/i) has been found by me. On it, sages who
know Brahman move on to the Svargaloka (heaven),
and thence higher, as entirely free.

‘ On that path they say that there is white and
blue, yellow, green, and red ; that path was found by
Brahman, and on it goes whoever knows Brahman,
and who has done good, and obtained splendour. 5 We
have here the five colours of the rainbow, while the
Bifrost rainbow had only three.

The idea that the wicked cannot find the path of
the Fathers or the Gods is not entirely absent in the
Upanishads. For we read (Brih. Ar. IY. 4, 10):

4 All who worship what is not knowledge, enter into
blind darkness ; ’ and again, c There are indeed those
unblessed worlds covered with blind darkness. Men
who are ignorant, not enlightened, go after death to
these worlds/ Nay, in the $atapatha Brahma^ia I. 9.
3, 2, we actually read of flames on both sides of the
path which burn the wicked, but do not touch the
pure soul.

c The same path leads either to the Gods or to the

172

LECTUBE V.

Fathers. On both sides two flames are ever burning :
they scorch him who deserves to be scorched, and
allow him to pass who deserves to pass/

There is also a line quoted in the Nirukta which
may refer to this path, where women say :

n eg gih.miija.ntjo narakam patama.

4 May we not walk crooked and fall into hell/

It is, however, in the ancient religion of Persia that
this bridge becomes most prominent. It has there
received the name of Kinv&t, which can only mean
the searching, the revenging, the punishing bridge,
hi being connected with Greek na>, rivco, and nw.

Of this bridge we read in the Vendidad, XIX. 29:

£ Tken the fiend, named Vizaresha, carries off in
bonds the soul of the wicked Dadva-worshippers who
live in sin. The soul enters the way made by time,
and open both to the wicked and to the righteous.
And at the head of the Ainva£ bridge, the holy
bridge made by Mazda, they ask for their spirits and
souls the reward for the worldly goods which they
gave away here below/

This bridge, which extends over hell and leads to
paradise, widens for the soul of the righteous to the
length of nine javelins, for the souls of the wicked it
narrows to a thread, and they fall into hell 1 .

When we find almost the same circumstantial
account among the Mohammedans, it seems to me
that we shall have to admit in this case an actual
historical borrowing, and not, as in the case of

1 Arda vnaf, Y. l.
note.

Darmesteter, Vendid&d, S. B, xv. p. 212

JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

173

Indians and Persians, a distant common origin. The
idea of the bridge was probably adopted by the Jews
in Persia 1 , and borrowed by Mohammed from his
Jewish friends. It is best known under the name of
Es-Sirat. The seventh chapter of the Koran, called
A1 Aaraf, gives the following account of the bridge :

e And betwixt the two there is a veil, and on
al Aaraf are men who know each (the good and the
wicked) by marks, and they shall cry out to the
fellows of Paradise : Peace be upon you ! They cannot
enter it, although they so desire. But when their
sight is turned towards the fellows of Fire, they say :
0 Lord, place us not with the unjust people! And
the fellows in al Aaraf will cry out to the men
whom they know by their marks, and say, Of no
avail to you were your collections, and what you
were so big with pride about; are these those ye
swore that God -would not extend mercy to ? Enter
Paradise, there is no fear for you, nor shall ye be
grieved. But the fellows of Fire shall cry out to the
fellows of Paradise, “ Pour out upon us water, or
something of what God has provided you with.” ’
When we find a similar account among the Todas
in Southern India, it is difficult to say whether they
derived it from the Brahmans or possibly from a
Mohammedan source. It resembles the latter more
than the former, and it might be taken by some
ethnologists as of spontaneous growth among the
Dravidian inhabitants of India. According to a writer

1 In the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, Jewish
doctors are known to have been all-powerful at the Sassanian
court, under Sapor II and Yazdagard. Academy , Nov. 28, 1891,
p. 483.

174

LECTUKE Y.

in the Nineteenth Century, June, 1892, p. 959, the
Todas have a heaven and a hell, the latter a disma]
stream full of leeches, across which the souls of the
departed have to pass upon a single thread, which
breaks beneath the weight of those burdened with
sin, but stands the slight strain of a good man’s soul.

In the Talmud, as I am informed by the Rev. Dr.
Gaster, this bridge does not seem to be known. It
is mentioned, however, in the 21st chapter of the
Jana dele Eliahu , a work of the tenth century, but
containing fragments of much earlier date. Here we
read: ‘In that hour (of the last judgment) God calls
back to life the idols of the nations, and he says: “Let
every nation with their god cross the bridge of
Gehinom, and when they are crossing it, it will
appear to them like a thread, and they fall down into
Gehinom, both the idols and their worshippers.”’
The passage occurs once more in the Yalhvut Shim -
eani, ii. §500, ed. pr. (Salonica, 1526), f. 87 seq,, and
according to the best judges, the legend itself goes
back to pre-islamitic times.

So far we are still on safe and almost historical ground.
But the belief in such a bridge is not confined to the
East ; and yet, when we are told that the peasants in
Yorkshire spoke not so long ago of a c Brig o’ Dread,
Na broader than a thread 1 / we can hardly believe that
this Brig o’ Dread is the modern representative of
the northern Bifrost bridge, because that bridge was
never a very narrow bridge, to be crossed by the good
only. I think we must here again admit a real his-
torical communication. It is more likely, I think, that

1 J. Thoms, Anecdotes and Traditions , pp. 89-90 ; Grimm, Deutsche
Mythologie, p. 794.

J0UBNEY 0 P THE SOUL AETEB DEATH. 175

the idea of this bridge caught the fancy of some crusa-
der, and that he spoke or sang of it on his return to
France, and that with the Normans the Brig o’ Dread
travelled into England. In France also the peasants
of Nievre know of this bridge as a small plank which
Saint Jean d’Archange placed between the earth and
paradise, and of which they sing :

Pas pu longue, pas pu large
Qu’un ch’veu de la Sainte Yiarge,

Ceux qu’savont la raison <T Dieu,

Par dessus passeront,

Ceux qu* la sauront pas
Au bout mourront.

‘Not longer, not larger than a hair of the Holy Virgin, those
who know the reason of God (or the prayer of God') will pass over
it ; those who do not know it, will die at the end/

From the folk-lore of the peasants this belief in a
bridge leading from this to a better world found its
way into the folk-lore of mediaeval theologians, and
we read of a small bridge leading from purgatory to
paradise in the Legenda Aurea, c. 50 (De S. Patricio),
and in other places h

Is it not curious to see these ideas either cropping
up spontaneously in different parts of the world, or
handed on by a real historical tradition from India
to Persia, from Persia to Palestine, from Palestine to
France, and from France even to Yorkshire? And at
the root of all, there is that simple but ineradicable
belief that the Human and the Divine cannot be
separated for ever, and that as the rainbow bridges
heaven and earth, or as the galaxy shows us a bright
way through myriads of stars to the highest Empy-
rean, there must be a bridge between Earth and

1 Cf. Liebrecbt zu Gervasius, Otia impencUia , Hanover, 1856, p. 90.

176

LECTURE V.

Heaven, between the soul and God; there must be
a Way, and a Truth, and a Life to guide the soul to
its real home, or, as another religion expresses it,
there must be a faith to take us home, and to make
us all one in God. (Of. St. John xvii. 21.)

LECTURE VI.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA.

General similarities in Eschatological Eegends.

I MENTIONED at the end of my last Lecture a
number of traditions gathered from different parts
of the world, and all having reference to a bridge
between earth and heaven. Some of these traditions
were purely mythological, and were suggested, as it
seemed, by actual phenomena of nature, such as the
rainbow and the Milky Way. Others, on the contrary,
sprang evidently from a moral conviction that there
must be a way by which the human soul could return
to God, a conviction which, however abstract in its
origin, could not altogether resist being likewise
clothed in the end in more or less fanciful and mytho-
logical phraseology.

When we have to deal with common traditions
found in India, Greece, and Germany, we must
generally be satisfied if we can discover their simplest
germs, and show how these germs grew and assumed
a different colouring on Indian, Greek, or German
soil I explained this to you before in the case of
the Greek Charites , the Sanskrit Haritas. Here we
find that the words are identically the same, only
pronounced differently according to the phonetic pecu-
liarities of the Greek and the Sanskrit languages.

(4) N

178

LECTURE VI.

The common germ was found in the bright rays of
the sun, conceived as horses in the Yeda, as beautiful
maidens in Greece. The same applies, as I showed
many years ago, to the Greek Daphne . Daphne would
in Sanskrit be represented by D ah ana, and this
would mean the burning or the bright one. This
root dah has yielded the name for day and dawn in
German. In Sanskrit it has been replaced by AhaniA
There is in the Veda a clear reference to the Dawn
dying whenever the sun tries to approach her, and we
have a right therefore to interpret the Greek legend
of Daphne, trying to escape from the embraces of
Phoebus, as a repetition of the same story, that the
Dawn, when she endeavours to fly from the ap-
proaches of the sun, either dies or is changed into a
laurel tree. This change into a laurel tree, however,
was possible in a Greek atmosphere only, where
daphne had become the name of the laurel tree, which
was called daphne because the wood of the laurel
tree was easy to kindle and to burn.

The lessons which we have learnt from Comparative
Mythology hold good with regard to Comparative
Theology also. If we find similar religious or even
philosophical ideas or traditions in Greece and in
India, we must look upon them simply as the result
of the common humanity or the common language of
the people, and be satisfied with very general features ;
but when we proceed to compare the ideas of the
ancient Parsis with those of the Vedic poets, we
have a right to expect coincidences of a different
and a much more tangible nature.

1 See Hopkins, On English day and Sanskrit (d)ahan. JPro-
ceedings of American Oriental Society , 1892.

THE ESCHAT0L03Y OF THE AYESTA.

179

Peculiar relation “between tlie Seligions of India and Persia.

The exact historical relation, however, between the
most ancient religions of India and Persia is very
peculiar, and by no means as yet fully elucidated.
It has been so often misconceived and misrepresented
that we shall have to examine the facts very carefully
in order to gain a clear conception of the real re-
lationship of these two religions. No religion of the
ancient world has been so misrepresented as that con-
tained in the A vesta. We shall therefore have to enter
into some details, and examine the ipsissima verba of
the Avesta. In doing this I am afraid that my lec-
ture to-day on the Avesta and its doctrines touching
the immortality of the soul, will not contain much
that can be of interest to any but Oriental scholars.
But what I have always been most anxious about,
is that those who follow these lectures should get an
accurate and authentic knowledge of the facts of the
ancient religions. Many people are hardly aware how
difficult it is to give a really accurate account of any of
the ancient Oriental religions. But think how difficult
it is to say anything about the real teaching of Christ,
without being contradicted by some Doctor of Divinity,
whether hailing from Rome or from Edinburgh. And
yet the facts lie here within a very narrow compass,
very different from the voluminous literature of the
religions of the Brahmanist or Buddhists. The lan-
guage of the New Testament is child’s play compared
to Yedic Sanskrit or Avestic Zend. If then one
sees the wrangling going on in churches and chapels
about the right interpretation of some of the simplest
passages in the Gospels, it might seem almost hopeless

180

LECTURE YI.

to assert anything positive about the general cha-
racter of the Yedic or Avestic religions. Yet, strange
to say, it has happened that the same persons who
seem to imagine that no one but a Doctor of Divinity
has any right to interpret the simplest verses of the
New Testament, feel no hesitation in writing long
essays on Zoroaster, on Buddhism and Mohammedan-
ism, without knowing a word of Zend, P&li, or Arabic.
They not only spread erroneous opinions on the
ancient Eastern religions, but they think they can
refute them best, after having thus misrepresented
them. If the Avestic religion has once been repre-
sented as Fire-worship and Dualism, what can be
easier than to refute Fire-worship and Dualism % But
if we consult the original documents, and if we dis-
tinguish, as we do in the case of the New Testament,
between what is early and what is late in the sacred
canon of the Zoroastrians, we shall see that Zoroaster
taught neither fire-worship nor dualism.

Zoroaster teaches neither Fire-worship nor Dualism.

The supreme deity of Zoroaster is Ahuramazda, not
Atar, fire, though Atar is sometimes called the son of
Ahuramazda 1 . Fire no doubt is a sacred object in all
ancient sacrifices, but the fire, as such, is no more
worshipped as the supreme God in the Avesta than it
is in the Veda.

If we want to understand the true nature of the
religion of Zoroaster we must remember, first of all,
that the languages in which the Veda and Avesta are
composed are more closely related to each other than
any other language of the Aryan family. They are

1 Physical Religion, p. 231.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE A VESTA.

181

in fact dialects, rather than two different languages.
We must also remember that the religions of Zoroaster
and of the Vedic Eishis share a certain number of
their deities in common. It used to be supposed that
because deva in the Veda is the name for gods, and
in the A vesta the name for evil spirits, therefore the two
religions were entirely antagonistic. But that is not
the case. The name for gods in the Veda is not only
deva, but likewise asura. This name, if derived
from asu, breath, meant originally the living, he who
lives and moves in the great phenomena of nature,
or, as we should say, the living God . Certain Vedic
gods, particularly Varuna, are in the Veda also
called Asura in the good sense of the word. But
very soon the Sanskrit asura took a bad sense, for
instance, in the last book of the Eig-veda and in the
Atharva-veda, and particularly in the Brahma?ias.
Here we constantly find the Asuras fighting against
the Dev as. Deva, as you remember, was the common
Aryan name for gods, as the bright beings of nature.
But while Asura became the name of the highest deity
in the Avesta, namely Ahuramazda or Ormazd, deva
occurs in the Avesta always in a bad sense, as the
name of evil spirits. These D evas (daevas),the modem
Persian div, are the originators of all that is bad, of
every impurity, of sin and death, and are constantly
thinking of causing the destruction of the fields and
trees and of the houses of religious men. The spots
most liked by them, according to Zoroastrian notions,
are those most filled with dirt and filth, and especially
cemeteries, which places are therefore objects of the
greatest abomination to a true Ormazd worshipper \

1 Haug, Essays on the Par sis, p. 268.

182

LECTURE VI.

It is difficult to account for these facts, hut we
must always remember that while some of the prin-
cipal Vedic deities, such as Indra 1 , for instance, occur
in the Avesta as demons, other Devas or divine beings
in the Veda have retained their original character in
the Avesta, for instance Mithra , the Vedic Mitra,
the sun, Airyaman, the Vedic Ary am an, likewise a
name of the sun, a deity presiding over marriages.
Bhaga, another solar deity in the Veda, occurs in
the Avesta as bagha, and has become there a general
name for god. This word must be as old as deva,
for it occurs in the Slavonic languages as bog , god.
It is known also from the name of Behistiin, the
mountain on which Darius engraved his great in-
scriptions, in cuneiform letters. The Greeks call it
Bayacrrava , i. e. the place of the gods. Other divine
names which the Avesta and the Veda share in
common are the Avestic Arm ait i, the Vedic Ara-
mati, the earth, Narasamsa, lit. renowned among
men (a name of Agni, Pushan, and other gods in the
Veda), the Avestic Nairyasanha, a messenger of
Ormazd. Lastly, we find that while Indra has become
a demon under the name of Andra, one of his best-
known Vedic epithets, namely, VWtrahan, slayer of
Vritra, occurs in the Avesta as Verethraghna, mean-
ing simply the conqueror, the angel who grants
victory. His name becomes in the end Behr&m, and
one of the Yashts is addressed to him, the Behram
Yasht. It has generally been supposed, therefore,
that a religious schisrri took place, and that Zara-
thushtra seceded from the worshippers of the Vedic

1 Also &aurva daeva, i. e. Sarva, and Naonliaithya daova, the
Nasatyau.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AYESTA.

183

Devas. There is some truth in this, but though there
was a severance, there always remained a common
background for the two religions. Many of the Yedic
deities were retained, subject only to the supremacy
of Ahuramazda. It is the idea of one supreme God,
the Ahuramazda, which forms the characteristic dis-
tinction between the Avestic and the Yedic religions.
Only Zarathushtra’s monotheism does not exclude a
belief in a number of deities, so long as they are not
conceived as the equals of Ahuramazda. In his moral
character Ahuramazda may really be looked upon as
a development of the Vedic Varuwa, but the moral
character of this deity has become far more prominent
in the Avesta than in the Veda.

The Avestic religion, as we know it from its own
sacred books, is in fact a curious mixture of mono-
theism, polytheism, and dualism. Ahuramazda is no
doubt the supreme God, the creator and ruler of all
things, but there are many other divine beings who,
though subject to him, are yet considered worthy of
receiving adoration and sacrificial worship. Again,
Ahuramazda, so far as he represents the good spirit,
spenta mainyu, the spirit of light, is constantly
opposed by Angra mainyu, best known in our times
as Ahriman, the evil spirit, the spirit of darkness.
But these two spirits were not originally conceived as
two separate beings. In the ancient Gathas there is
no trace as yet of a personal conflict between Ormazd
and Ahriman. The enemy against whom Ormazd
fights there, is Drukh, the Yedic Druh, "the lying
spirit. 5 Darius also in the cuneiform inscriptions does
not yet mention Ahriman as the opponent of Ormazd

184

LECTURE VI.

The Problem of the Origin of Evil.

Dr. Hang seems quite right in stating that Zara-
thushtra, having arrived at the idea of the unity and
indivisibility of the Supreme Being, had afterwards to
solve the great problem which has engaged the atten-
tion of so many wise men of antiquity and even of
modern times, namely, how to reconcile the imperfec-
tions discernible in the world, the various kinds of
evil, wickedness, and baseness, with the goodness and
justice of the one God. He solved this question philo-
sophically, by the admission of two primeval causes,
which, though different, were united, and produced
the world of material things as well as that of the
spirit. This doctrine may best be -studied in the
thirtieth chapter of the Yasna. The one who pro-
duced all reality (gaya) and goodness is called there
the good mind (vohu mano), the other, through whom
the unreality (agyaiti) originated, bears the name
of the evil mind (akem man6). All good, and true,
and perfect things, which fall under the category of
reality, are the productions of the ‘ good mind/ while
all that is bad and delusive belongs to the sphere
of ‘ non-reality/ and is traced to the evil mind. These
are the twa moving causes in the universe, united
from the beginning, and therefore called twins (y&m&,
Sk. yamau). They are present everywhere, in Ahura-
mazda as well as in men. These two primeval prin-
ciples, if supposed to be united in Ahuramazda himself,
are called spenta mainyu, his beneficent spirit, and
angra mainyu, his hurtful spirit. That Angra mainyu
was not conceived then as a separate being, opposed
to Ahuramazda, Dr. Haug has proved from Yasna
XIX. 9, where Ahuramazda is mentioning these two

THE ESCHATOLOGY OE THE AVESTA. 18 £

spirits as inherent in his own nature, though he dis-
tinctly called them the ‘ two masters ’ (payu), and the
c two creators.’ But while at first these two creative
spirits were conceived as only two parts or ingre-
dients of the Divine Being, this doctrine of Zara-
thushtra’s became corrupted in course of time by
misunderstandings and false interpretations. Spenta
mainyu, the beneficent spirit, was taken as a name
of Ahuramazda himself, and the Angra mainyu, by
becoming entirely separated from Ahuramazda, was
then regarded as the constant adversary of Ahura-
mazda. This is Dr. Haug’s explanation of the Dualism
in the later portions of the Avesta, and of the constant
conflict between God and the Devil which we see
for instance in the first fargard of the Y endidad. The
origin of good and evil w r ould thus have been trans-
ferred unto the Deity itself, though there the possible
evil was always overcome by the real good. Zoroaster
had evidently perceived that without possible evil
there can be no real good, just as without temptation
there can be no virtue. The same contest which
is supposed to be carried on within the deity, is also
carried on by each individual believer. Each be-
liever is exhorted to take part in the fight against
the evil spirit, till at last the final victory of good
over evil will be secured.

This, of course, is not stated in so many words,
but it follows from passages gathered from different
parts of the Avesta.*/

THe Angels, originally qualities of Ormazd.

The same process of changing certain qualities of
the Divine Being into separate beings can be clearly

186

LECTUEE Vf.

watched in the case of the Ameshaspentas. The
Ameshaspentas of the Avesta are lit. the immortal
benefactors. These were clearly at first mere quali-
ties of the Divine Being, or gifts which Ormazd might
grant to his worshippers, but they became afterwards
angelic or half-divine beings, such as Yohu mano
(Bahman), good mind, Ashavahishta (Ardi bahisht),
the best truth, Armaiti (Spendarmad), devotion and
piety, Ameret (Amard&d), immortality, Haurva-
tkd (Khordad), health, Kshathra vairya (Shahri-
var), abundance of earthly goods.

As these angels formed in later times the great
council of Ormazd, Ahriman also was supposed to be
surrounded by a similar council of six. They were
Akem mano, the evil spirit, Indra, $aurva, Nao^-
haithya, and two personifications of Darkness and
Poison. In this way the original Monotheism of the
Zoroastrian religion came to be replaced by that Dual-
ism which is wrongly supposed to be the characteristic
feature of the ancient Persian religion, and offers many
points of similarity with the belief in God and His
angels, and in a devil also, as we find it in the later
portions of the Old Testament. Prom thence this
belief was transferred to the New Testament, and
is still held by many as a Christian dogma. Whether
this belief in God and a devil and the angels forming
their respective councils was actually borrowed by
the Jews from Persia, is still an open question. If
any of the Persian names of these angels or devils
had been discovered in the Old Testament, the ques-
tion would at once have been settled; but there is
only one really Persian name of one of these evil
spirits attached to Ahriman, which actually has found

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA.

187

its way into the Old Testament in the apocryphal
book of Tobit. iii. 8, namely Asmodeus , which is the
Persian AMtma daeva, the demon of anger and
wrath. This name could have been borrowed from
a Persian source only, and proves therefore the exis-
tence of a real historical intercourse between Jews
and Persians at the time when the book of Tobit was
written. We look in vain for any other Persian name
of a good or an evil spirit in the genuine books of
the Old Testament 1 , though there is no doubt great
similarity between the angels and archangels of the
Old Testament and the Ameshaspentas of the Avesta,
as has been shown by Dr. Kohut in his very learned
essay on this subject.

Of all this, of the original supremacy of Ahura-
mazda, of the later dualism of Ahuramazda and
Angra mainyu, and of the councils of these two hos-
tile powers there is no trace in the Veda. Traces,
however, of a hostile feeling against the Asuras in
general appear in the change of meaning of that word
in some portions of the Eig-veda and the Atharva-
veda, and more particularly in the Brahma-nas.

Asuras and Suras.

A new change appears in the later Sanskrit litera-
ture. Here the Asuras, instead of fighting with the
Devas, are represented as fighting against the Suras ;
that is to say, by a mere mistake the c A 5 of Asura
has been taken as a negative £ a/ whereas it is the
radical £ a 3 of asu, breath, and a new name has been
formed, Sura, which seemed to be connected with

1 See, however, my remarks on p. 5*2, on the appellation Ahmi
ya t ahmi.

188

LECTURE VI.

svar, the sky, and was used as a name of the gods,
opposed to the Asuras, the Non-gods h This is how
mythology is often made. All the fights between the
Saras and Asuras, of which we read so much in the
Puranas, are really based on a misunderstanding of
the old name of the living God* namely Asu-ra, not
A-sura.

In whatever way we may try to account for the
change of the Vedic Devas, gods, into the Avestic
Daevas, evil spirits, there can be no doubt that we
have to deal here with an historical fact. For some
reason or other the believers in the true Asuras and
in Ahuramazda must have separated at a certain
time from the believers in the Vedic Devas. They
differed on some points, but they agreed on others.
In fact, we possess in the Yasna, in one of the more
ancient remnants of Zarathushtra s religion, some
verses which can only be taken as an official formula
in which his followers abjured their belief in the
Devas. There (Yasna XII) we read;

Abjuration of Da4va Worship.

c I cease to be a Deva (worshipper). I profess to
be a Zoroastrian Mazdayaznian (a worshipper of
Ahuramazda), an enemy of the Devas, and a devotee
of Ahura, a praiser of the immortal benefactors
(Ameshaspentas). In sacrificing to the immortal
Ameshaspentas I ascribe all good things to Ahura-
mazda, who is good and has (all that is) good, who
is righteous, brilliant, glorious, who is the originator
of all the best things, of the spirit of nature (g&ush),

1 By the same process, sita, bright, seems to have been formed
from asita, dark.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AYESTA. 189

of righteousness, of the luminaries, and the self-
shining brightness which is in the luminaries.

C I forsake the Devas, the wicked, bad, wrongful
originators of mischief, the most baneful, destructive,
and basest of beings. I forsake the Devas and those
like Devas, the sorcerers and those like sorcerers, and
any beings whatever of such kinds. I forsake them
with thoughts, words, and deeds, I forsake them
hereby publicly, and declare that all lies and false-
hood are to be done away with/

I do not see how after this any one can doubt that
the separation of the followers of Zarathushtra, the
believers in Ahuramazda, from the worshippers of the
Yedic Devas, Yvas a real historical event, though it
does by no means follow that their separation w r as
complete, and that the follow T ers of Zoroaster surren-
dered every belief which they formerly shared in
common with the Vedic Rishis.

I think we shall he perfectly right if we treat the
Avestic as a secondary stage, as compared with the
old Yedic religion, only we must guard against the
supposition that the Avesta could not have preserved
a number of ideas and religious traditions older even
and simpler than what we find in the Veda. The
Yedic poets, and more particularly the Vedic philo-
sophers, have certainly advanced much beyond the
level that had been reached before they were de-
serted by the Zoroastrians, but the Zoroastrians may
have preserved much that is old and simple, much
that dates from a period previous to their separation,
much that we look for in vain in the Veda.

190

LECTUItE VI.

Immortality of the Soul in tlie Avesta.

This seems certainly to be the case when we com-
pare the Persian accounts of the immortality of the
soul and its migrations after death with those which
we examined before in the Upanishads. The idea
that knowledge or faith is better than good works,
and that a higher immortality awaits the thinker
than the doer, an idea so familiar to the authors
of the Upanishads, is quite foreign to the Avesta.
The Avestic religion is before all things an ethical
religion. It is meant to make people good. It holds
out rewards for the good, and punishments for the
bad in this life and in the life to come. It stands
in this respect much more on the old level of the
Yedic hymns than on that of the Upanishads. In
the hymns, as we saw, the departed was simply told
to run on the good path, past the two dogs, the brood
of Sarama, the four-eyed, the grey, and then to go
towards the wise Pitris or Fathers who were happily
rejoicing with Yama. Or the departed was told to
go forth on those ancient roads on which his fore-
fathers had departed, and to meet the two kings
delighting in (svadha) offerings, Yama and the god
Varm?a. Nothing is said there of the smoke carrying
him to the sky, nor of the sun moving towards the
south or the north, or of the departed rising upwards
till he reaches the moon or the place of lightning.
The goal of the journey of the departed is simply the
place where he will meet the Fathers, those who
were distinguished for piety and penance, or those
who fell in battle, or those who during life were
generous with their wealth.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA.

191

The Pit r /s or Patliers as conceived in tlie Ve&ic Hymns.

All this is much more human than the account
given in the Upanishacls. And when we read in the
Big-veda the invocations addressed to the Pit?’/s or
the three generations of ancestors, we find there too
again a much more childlike conception of their
abode than what is given us in the Upanishads.
Sometimes the great-grandfathers are supposed to be
in heaven, the grandfathers in the sky, and the
fathers still somewhere on the earth, but all are
invited together to accept the offerings made to them
at the $raddhas, nay, they are supposed to consume
the viands placed before them. Thus we read (Big-
veda X. 15) :

1. May the Soma-loving Fathers 1 , the lowest, the
highest, and the middle arise ! May the gentle and
righteous Fathers who have come to life (again), pro-
tect us in these invocations !

2. May this salutation be for the Fathers to-da} r ,
for those who have departed before or after ; whether
they now dwell in the sky above the earth, or among
the blessed people l

3. I invited the wise Fathers .... may they come
hither quickly, and sitting on the grass readily par-
take of the poured-out draught !

4. Come hither to us with your help, you Fathers
sitting on the grass! We have prepared these liba-
tions for you, accept them ! Come hither with your
most blessed protection, and give us health and wealth
without fail !

1 The Fathers wha have reached the moon.

192

LECTUKE VI.

5. The Soma-loving Fathers have been called
hither to their clear viands which are placed on the
grass. Let them approach, let them listen, let them
bless, let them protect ns !

6. Bending your knee and sitting on my right
accept all this sacrifice. Do not hurt ns, 0 Fathers,
for any wrong that we may have committed against
yon, men as we are !

7. When you sit down on the lap of the red dawns,
grant wealth to the generous mortal! 0 Fathers,
give of your treasure to the sons of this man here,
and bestow vigour here on us !

8. May Yama, as a friend with friends, consume
the offerings according to his wish, united with those
old Soma-loving Fathers of ours, the Vasishttas, who
arranged the Soma draught !

9. Come hither, 0 Agni, with those wise and truth-
ful Fathers who like to sit clown near the hearth,
who thirsted when yearning for the gods, who knew
the sacrifice, and who were strong in praise with
their songs !

10. Come, 0 Agni, with those ancient Fathers who
like to sit down near the hearth, who for ever praise
the gods, the truthful, who eat and drink our obla-
tions, making company with Indra and the gods !

11. 0 Fathers, you who have been consumed by

Agni, come here, sit down on your seats, you kind
guides ! Eat of the offerings which we have placed
on the turf, and then grant us wealth and strong
offspring ! °

12. 0 Agni, 0 (?ata vedas, at our request thou hast
carried the offerings, having first rendered them
sweet. Thou gavest them to the Fathers, and they

THE ESCHATOLOGY OP THE AYESTA. 193

fed on their share. Eat also, 0 god, the proffered
oblations !

13. The Fathers who ai'e here, and the Fathers
who are not here, those whom we know, and those
whom we know not, thou, fratavedas, knowest how
many they are, accept the well-made sacrifice with
the sacrificial portions !

14. To those who, whether burnt by fire or not
burnt by fire, rejoice in their share in the midst of
heaven, grant thou, 0 King, that their body may take
that life which they wish for !

Compared with these hymns, the Upanishads repre-
sent a decidedly later development and refinement ;
they represent, in fact, the more elaborate views of
speculative theologians, and no longer the simple
imaginings of sorrowing mourners.

If we now turn to examine the ideas which the
followers of Zoroaster had formed to themselves about
the fates of the soul after death and its approach to
God, we shall find that they also represent a much
simpler faith, though there are some points on which
they are clearly dependent on, or closely allied with
the Upanishads, unless we suppose that both the
Zoroastrians and the authors of the Upanishads
arrived independently at the same ideas.

Pate of tile individual Soul at t&e general resurrection.

We read in the Vended XIX. 27 U

e Creator of the settlements supplied with creatures,
righteous one! What happens when a man shall
give up his soul in the world of existence?

c Then said Ahuramazda : After a man is dead, when

1 S. B. E,, vol. iv. p. 212.

( 4 )

194

LECTUBE YI.

his time is over, then the hellish evil-doing Dafevas
assail him, and when the third night 1 is gone, when
the dawn appears and brightens up, and makes
Mithra, the god with the beautiful weapons, reach
the all-happy mountains and the sun is rising —
f Then the fiend, named Vizaresha, carries off in
bonds the souls of the wicked Daeva-worshippers who
live in sin. The soul enters the way made by time,
and open both to the wicked and to the righteous.
At the head of the K'mv&b bridge made by Mazda,
they ask for their spirits and souls the reward for the
worldly good which they gave away here below/

This iiinvatf bridge of which I spoke in a former
lecture, is known as early as the G&thas (XLVI. 12),
and it is called there the judgment bridge (p. 133) 2 ,
also the bridge of earth (p. 183). In one place (p. 173)
we read of the bridges, just as in the Upanishads we
read of two roads, one leading to the Fathers, the
other leading to the gods. There can be little doubt
therefore that this bridge of the Avesta has the same
origin as the bridge in the Upanishads. We read in
the A7<tand. Up. VIII. 4, 2, that ‘day and night do not
pass this bridge, nor old age, death and grief, neither
good nor evil deeds; that all evil-doers turn away
from it, because the world of Brahman is free from
all evil. Therefore he who has crossed that bridge, if
blind, ceases to be blind ; if wounded, ceases to be
wounded ; if afflicted, ceases to be afflicted. There-
fore when that bridge has been crossed, night be-
comes day indeed/ It is true that here this bridge

1 This shows that rising after the third night, or on the fourth
day, was the recognised belief in Persia ; not on the third day, as
among the Jews.

2 8. B. J2,j vol. xxxi.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AYESTA.

195

is already taken in a more metaphysical sense and
identified with the Atman, the self; which, from a
Vedanta point of view, is called the only true bridge
between the self and the Self; still the original con-
ception of a bridge which separates (vidhWti) and at
the same time connects this and the other world,
which evil-doers fear to cross, and where all that is of
evil is left behind, is clearly there. As the commen-
tary explains that this bridge is made of earth, and as
in the Avesta also, it is called the bridge of earth, we
must take it as having been conceived originally as
a bank of earth, a pathway (a pons) across a river
(A7^and. Up. VIII. 4, 1, note), rather than a suspended
bridge over an abyss.

Be wards and Punishments after Death.

I shall now read you another and fuller account of
what the Zoroastrians have to say about that bridge,
and about the fate of the soul after death, and more
particularly about rewards and punishments. This
account is taken from the Hadhokht Nask 1 :

1. Zarathushtra asked Ahuramazda: £ 0 Ahuramazda,
most beneficent Spirit, Maker of the material world,
thou Holy One!

£ When one of the faithful departs this life, where
does his soul abide on that night ? 5

2. Ahuramazda answered: £ It takes its seat near the
head, singing (the Ustavaiti GUtha) and proclaiming
happiness: ££ Happy is he, happy the man, whoever
he be, to whom Ahuramazda gives the full accom-
plishment of his wishes!” On that night his soul
tastes as much of pleasure as the whole of the living
world can taste. 3

1 Cf. Hang, p. 220 ; Darmesteter, ii. 314.

196

LECTUKE VI.

3. ‘ On the second night, where does his soul abide ? 5

4. Ahuramazda answered: ‘It takes its seat near the
head, singing (the Ubtavaiti Gatha) and proclaiming
happiness : “ Happy is he, happy the man, whoever
he be, to whom Ahuramazda gives the full accom-
plishment of his wishes!” On that night his soul
tastes as much of pleasure as the whole of the living
•world can taste/

5. ‘ On the third night, where does his soul abide? 5

6. Ahuramazda answered: ‘It takes its seat near the
head, singing (the Ustavaiti Gatha) and proclaiming
happiness: “Happy is he, happy the man, whoever
he be, to whom Ahuramazda gives the full accom-
plishment of his wishes! 55 On that night his soul
tastes as much of pleasure as the whole of the living
world can taste. 5

7. At the end of the third night, when the dawn
appears, it seems to the soul of the faithful one, as if
it were brought amidst plants and scents : it seems as
if a wind were blowing from the region of the south,
from the regions of the south, a sweet-scented wind,
sweeter- scented than any other wind in the world.

8. And it seems to the soul of the faithful one as if
he were inhaling that wind with the nostrils, and he
thinks : ‘ Whence does that wind blow, the sweetest-
scented wind I ever inhaled with my nostrils ? 5

9. And it seems to him as if his own conscience
were advancing to him in that wind, in the shape of
a maiden fair, bright, white-armed, strong, tail-formed,
high-standing, full- breasted, beautiful of body, noble,
of a glorious seed, of the size of a maid in her fifteenth
year, as fair as the fairest thing in the world.

10. And the soul of the faithful one addressed her,

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AY JEST A* 197

asking: ‘What maid art thou, who art the fairest
maid I have ever seen ? 5

11. And she, being his own conscience, answers
him : 1 0 thou youth of good thoughts, good words,
and good deeds, of good religion, I am thy own con-
science! ‘

4 Everybody did love thee for that greatness, good-
ness, fairness, sweet-scentedness, victorious strength,
and freedom from sorrow, in which thou dost appear
to me ;

12. c And so thou, 0 youth of good thoughts, good
words, and good deeds, of good religion ! didst love me
for that greatness, goodness, fairness, sweet-scented-
ness, victorious strength, and freedom from sorrow,
in which I appear to thee.

1 3. 4 When thou wouldst see a man making derision
and deeds of idolatry, or rejecting (the poor) and
shutting his door, then thou wouldst sit singing the
Gathas and worshipping the good waters and Atar,
the son of Ahuramazda, and rejoicing the faithful
that would come from near or from afar.

14. e I was lovely and thou madest me still love-
lier ; I was fair and thou madest me still fairer ; I was
desirable and thou madest me still more desirable;
I was sitting in a forward place and thou madest me
sit in the foremost place, through this good thought,
through this good speech, through this good deed of
thine ; and so henceforth men worship me for having
long sacrificed unto and conversed with Ahuramazda.

15. 4 The first step that the soul of the faithful man
made, placed him in the Good-Thought Paradise ;

4 The second step that the soul of the faithful man
made, placed him in the Good-Word Paradise*

198

LECTURE VI,

4 The third step that the soul of the faithful man
made, placed him in the Goocl-Deed Paradise ;

1 The fourth step that the soul of the faithful man
made, placed him in the Endless Lights/

16. Then one of the faithful, who had departed
before him, asked him, saying : ‘ Hoiv didst thou de-
part this life, thou holy man ? How didst thou come,
thou holy man ! from the abodes full of cattle and full
of the wishes and enjoyments of love? From the
material world into the world of the spirit? From
the decaying world into the undecaying one? How
long did thy felicity last ? 5

17. And Ahuramazda answered: e Ask him not
what thou askest him, who has just gone the dreary
way, full of fear and distress, where the body and the
soul part from one another.

18. ‘{Let him eat] of the food brought to him, of the
oil of Zaramaya: this is the food for the youth of
good thoughts, of good words, of good deeds, of good
religion, after he has departed this life ; this is the
food for the holy woman, rich in good thoughts, good
words, and good deeds, well-principled and obedient
to her husband, after she has departed this life/

The fate of the soul of the wicked is throughout the
opposite of what happens to the soul of a righteous
man. During three nights it sits near the skull and
endures as much suffering as the whole of the living
world can taste. At the end of the third night, when
the dawn appears, it seems as if it were brought amidst
snow and stench, and as if a wind were blowing from
the North, the foulest-scented of all the winds in the
world,. The wicked soul has to inhale that wind and
then to pass through the Evil-Thought Hell, the Evil-

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA.

199

Word Hell, and the Evil-Deed Hell. The fourth step
lays the soul in Endless Darkness. Then it has to
eat food of poison and poisonous stench, -whether it
was the soul of a wicked man or of a wicked woman.

You will have perceived how much of real truth
there is, hidden beneath all this allegorical language
of the Avesta. The language is allegorical, but no
one could have used that language who was not con-
vinced of its underlying truth, namely, that the soul
of the righteous will be rewarded in the next life by
his own good thoughts, his own good words, and his
own good deeds. The idea that these good thoughts,
■words, and deeds meet him in the shape of a beautiful
maiden, whom at first he does not know, till she tells
him who she is, is peculiar to the Avesta, though some
faint indications of it may again be discovered in
the Upanishads.

Good Works in the shape of a Beautiful Maiden.

For we read in the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, I. 3, that
when the departed approaches the hall of Brahman he
is received by beautiful maidens, called Apsaras. But
what we look for in vain in the Upanishads is the
ethical character which pervades the whole Avesta.
It is good thoughts, words, and deeds that are rewarded
in the next world, not knowledge which, as we saw,
carried off the highest reward according to the teaching
of the Upanishads. The sweet scents also by which
the departed is greeted in the next world form a
common element shared by the Upanishads and
by the Avesta.

Influence on Mohammedanism.

It would be curious to find out whether this alle-
gorical conception of the rewards of men in Paradise

200

LECTUEE VI.

may have influenced the mind of Mohammed, when
he promised his -warriors that they would be received
there by beautiful maidens. It would seem a curious
misapplication of a noble conception. But it is per-
fectly true that even in the Avesta the beauty of the
young maiden who receives the righteous soul, is
painted in what we should call warm and sensuous
colours, though there was nothing in her description
that would seem objectionable to an Oriental mind.
Such changes have happened in the history of other
religions also. The most probable historical channel
between Mohammed and the Avesta would be the
same again as that through which the idea of the
bridge Es Sirat reached Mohammed, namely, his
Jewish friends and teachers. ^

It is true there is no trace of a belief in Houris among:
the Jews, but Dr. Kohut pointed out many years ago,
in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl . Gesell&chaft ,
xxi. p. 566, that the Eabbis believed and taught that
when man comes near death, all his acts appear before
his soul, and that his good works promise to guide
him to the judgment-seat of God. They hold that
the souls of the pious are not admitted at once into
Paradise, but that they have first to render an account
and to suffer punishment for some defects that still
cling to them. This lasts for a twelvemonth, when the
body is supposed to be entirely decayed, so that the
soul may rise freely and remain in heaven. c The body/
says God, 4 is taken from the earth, not from heaven,
but thou, 0 soul, art a citizen of heaven, thou knowest
its laws and thou alone shalt render an account/ This
shows no doubt clear traces of Persian influence, but
at the same time an independent treatment of Persian

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA.

201

ideas, such as -we find them first in the Avesta. At all
events these Eabbis had advanced far beyond the
ideas which are found in the Old Testament as to
the fate of the soul after death.

There is another curious passage quoted by Dr.
Kohut from the Talmud (Synhedr. 91b, Midrash, Genes.
Eabba 169). for which, however, I know no parallel in
the Avesta. There we are told that at the time of the
resurrection the soul will justify itself and say: c Tim
body alone is guilty, he alone has sinned. I had
scarcely left it when, pure like a bird, I Hew through
the air. 1 But the body will say : e The soul alone was
guilty, she has driven me to sin. She had scarcely
left me, when I lay on the ground motionless and
sinned no more/ Then God places the soul once more
into the body and says : c See, how you have sinned,
now render an account, both of you/

Extract from the Minohhired on the Weighing* of the Bead.

In the Minokhired we get a still fuller account than
in the Avesta of the journey of the soul across the
bridge. There we read, II. 100 :

‘ Thou shouldest not become presumptuous through
life, for death cometh upon thee at last, the dog, the
bird lacerate the corpse, and the perishable part (sar/i-
nako) falls to the ground. During three days and nights
the soul sits at the crown of the head of the body. And
the fourth day, in the light of dawn, (with the) co-
operation of Srosh the righteous, Vai the good, and
Yahram the strong, and with the opposition of Astovi-
cla cl, Vai the bad, Frazishto the demon, and NizistS
the demon, and the evil-designing Aeshm, the evil-
doer, the impetuous assailant, it goes up to the awful

202

XiECTUBE VI.

/lindvar bridge (here ICuxvsit has been corrupted into
ifindvar), to which every one, righteous and wicked,
is coming. And many opponents have watched there,
with the desire of evil of Aeshm, the impetuous
assailant, and AstdvidacZ, who devours creatures of
every kind and knows no satiety, and the mediation
of Mitro and Srosh and Bashnu, and the weighing of
Bashnu, the just, with the balance of spirits which
renders no favour on any side, neither for the righteous
nor yet the wicked, neither for the lords nor yet the
monarchs. As much as a hair’s breadth it will not
turn and has no partiality, and he who is a lord and
monarch it considers equally in its decision with him
who is the least of mankind. And when a soul of the
righteous passes upon the bridge the width of the
bridge becomes as it were a league, and the righteous
soul passes over with the co-operation of Srosh the
righteous/ Then follows what we had before, namely,
his meeting a maiden who is handsomer and better
than any maiden in the world. And the righteous
soul speaks thus, ‘ Who mayest thou be, that a maiden
who is handsomer and better than thou was never
seen by me in the worldly existence/ In reply that
maiden says : ‘ I am no maiden, but I am thy virtuous
deeds, thou youth who art well thinking, well speaking,
well doing, and of good religion/

The only new feature in this account is the weighing
of the soul by Bashnu, the righteous. Of this there
is no trace in the Upanishads, though we saw that it
is alluded to in the Biihma^as (see p. 167). It is an
idea well known in Egypt, but it is impossible to
suppose that at that early time there was any com-
munication between Egypt and Persia. It is one of

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA,

203

those coincidences which can only be accounted for
by our remembering that what was natural in one
country may have been natural in another also.

Arrival of tlxe Soul "before the throne of Bahman and Ahuramazda.

Let us now follow the fate of the soul, after it has
crossed the Kinyat bridge. When the ICmx&t bridge
has been crossed, the archangel Bahman (Vohu-mano)
rises from a golden throne, and exclaims : £ How hast
thou come hither to us, 0 righteous one ! from the
perishable life to the imperishable life/

The souls of the righteous then proceed joyfully to
Ahuramazda, to the Ameshaspentas, to the golden
throne, to paradise (Garo-nemana), that is the residence
of Ahuramazda, the Ameshaspentas, and of the other
righteous ones.

Thus we see that the journey of the soul from this
life to a better life ends in the Avesta very much as
it ended in the Upanishads. The soul stands before
the throne of Ahuramazda in the Avesta as it stands
before the throne of Brahman in the Upanishads.
Only while the Upanishads say very little about the
punishments inflicted on the wicked, the Avesta ex-
plains that the unrighteous soul is received with scorn
even by the damned, its future fellow-sufferers, and
is tormented at the command of Angra mainyu, though
himself the spirit of evil, with poison and hideous
viands.

Common "background of Avesta and Veda.

If we compare the theories on the soul and its fate
after death, as we find them in the Upanishads and
in the Avesta, we see that a general belief in a soul

204

LECTURE VI.

and its life after death is common to both, and that
they likewise agree in believing that the righteous
soul is led to the throne of God, whether he is called
Brahman or Ahuramazda. But in several respects
the account of the souls journey seems more simple
in the Avesta than in the Upanishads. We saw that
it agrees more with the notions which we find ex-
pressed in the Vedic hymns about the departed, it
insists more on the virtuous character of the soul,
and distributes rewards and punishments in strict
accordance with the good thoughts, words, and deeds
of the departed. It says little or nothing about the
different stations on the two roads that lead to the
Fathers or to the gods, but it is more full in the de-
scription of the bridge and the weighing of the soul.
The idea that knowledge or faith is better than good
thoughts, words, and deeds has not yet dawned on the
Persian mind, still less is there a trace of the belief in
metempsychosis or the migration of the human soul
into the bodies of lower animals.

The common background of the two religions is
clear enough, though whether what is peculiar to each
is a remnant of an earlier period or the result of later
thoughts is more difficult to determine.

Fitaras, the Fathers in the Veda, the Fravashis in the Avesta,

We saw that in the hymns of the Veda the departed
were often spoken of as Pi tar as, the Fathers, and
that after receiving for three generations the sraddha
offering of their descendants, they were raised to
a rank equal almost to that of the Devas, nay at
a later time even superior to them. In the place of
these Pitaras we find in the Avesta the Fravashis, or

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE ATESTA.

205

in an earlier form the Fravardin. This would corre-
spond to a Sanskrit word pravartin, which, however,
does not occur in Sanskrit. Pravartin might mean
what moves forward or sets in motion, like pra-
vartaka, a promoter, but it is explained in Zend as
meaning protector. The Persian name Phraortes is
probably a Greek corruption of Pravarti.

It is curious that the name of Pitaras should not
occur in the Avesta, nor that of Pravartin in the Veda,
though the two were clearly meant at first for exactly
the same thing.

Wider meaning 1 of Fravas&i.

The Fravashis, however, are not restricted to the
departed, though their Fravashis are most frequently
invoked. Every being, w T h ether living or dead, has
its Fravashi, its unseen agent, which is joined to the
body at the time of birth, and leaves it again at the
time of death. The Fravashis remind us of the Greek
Daimones and the Roman Genii. The Fravashis
belong to the spiritual, the body to the material crea-
tion. Not only men, but the gods also, Ormazd, the
sacred word, the sky, the water, the plants, all have
their Fravashis. We may call the Fravashi the genius
of anything. Dr. Haug, however, goes further and
identifies the Fravashis with the ideas of Plato, which
is going too far, for the Fravashis are always self-
conscious, if not personal beings. Thus -we read in
the Fravardin Yasht 1 ;

‘ Ahuramazda spake to Spitama Zarathushtra : To
thee alone I shall tell the power and strength, glory,
usefulness, and happiness of the holy guardian angels,

1 TTtincr tv 9H7

206

LECTUBE VI.

the strong and victorious, 0 righteous Spitama Zara-
thushtra ! how they come to help me. By means of
their splendour and glory I uphold the sky, which
is shining so beautifully and which touches and
surrounds this earth; it resembles a bird which is
ordered by God to stand still there ; it is high as
a tree, wide-stretched, iron-bodied, having its own
light in the three worlds, Ahuramazda, together
with Mithra, Bashnu, and Spenta Armaiti, puts on
a garment decked with stars, and made by God
in such a way that nobody can see the ends of
its parts. By means of the splendour and glory of
the Fravashis, I uphold the high strong Anahita (the
celestial water) with bridges, the salutary, who drives
away the demons, who has the true faith and is to be
worshipped in the world/. . . .

12. ‘ If the strong guardian-angels of the righteous
should not give me assistance, then cattle and men,
the two last of the hundred classes of beings, would
no longer exist for me; then would commence the
devil’s power, the deviPs origin, the whole living
creation would belong to the devil.

16. ‘'Ey means of their splendour and glory, the
ingenuous man Zarathushtra, who spoke such good
words, who was the source of wisdom, who was
bom before Gotama, had such intercourse with God.
By means of their splendour and glory, the sun goes
on his path ; by means of their splendour and glory,
the moon goes on her path ; by means of their
splendour and glory, the stars go on their path/

Thus we see that almost everything that Ahura-
mazda does is done by him with the assistance of the
Fravashis, originally v the spirits of the departed, after-

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AYE ST A, 207

wards the spirits of almost everything in nature. But
that they were originally, like the Yedic Pitaras, the
spirits of the departed, we see from such passages as :

'I praise, I invoke, and extol the good, strong,
beneficent guardian angels of the righteous. We
praise those who are in the houses, those who are in
the countries, those who are in the Zoroastrian com-
munities, those of the present, those of the past, those
of the future, righteous, all those invoked in countries
where invocation is pz^actised.

£ Who uphold heaven, who uphold water, who up-
hold earth, who uphold nature, &c.

4 We worship the good and beneficent guardian
angels of the departed, who come to the village in the
season called Hamaspathmaeda. Then they roam
about there ten nights, wishing to learn what assist-
ance they might obtain, saying, “Who will praise us?
who will worship us? who will adore us? w T ho will
pray to us? who will satisfy us with milk and clothes
in his hand and with a prayer for righteousness?
whom of us will he call here? whose soul is to
worship you? To whom of us will he give that
offering in order to enjoy imperishable food for ever
and ever 9

Nowhere perhaps can the process by which the
spirits of the departed were raised to the rank of
gods be perceived more clearly than in the case of the
Persian Fravashis, but nowhere again is there stronger
evidence for what I hold against Mr. Herbert Spencer,
namely that this deification of the departed spirits
presupposes a belief in gods to whose rank these!
spirits could be raised.

LECTURE VII.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO,

Plato’s Authority,

R E 7? E ,Y -? rocee< ? J° explain to you more in

JLi detaii the ideas of the later Hindu philosophers

if o-dv t °f I' S ° aftGr d6athl ifc mft y be ^fu],

7 ly t0 refresb °« r memory, to devote one lecture
to a consideration of the best and highest thoughts
which the same problem has elicited in Greece If
we should find hereafter that there are certain simi-
larities between the thoughts of Plato and the thoughts

Ivtst? T Ph - tS ° f the U P an “s and° the

Avesta such similarities are no doubt interesting

and p er h a p S all the more so because, as I pointed out
befoie, we cannot ascribe them either to the com-
mumty of language or to historical tradition. Wo
can only account for them by that common human
nature which seems to frame these ideas by some
mward necessity, though without any tangiUe evi-
dence m support of any of them. You will not be
surprised if I turn at once to Plato

Plato though called a philosopher only, speaks
of he fate of the soul after death with autlmritv
with the same authority at least as the authoS
the Upanishads. Both Plato, however, and tin,

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

209

authors of the Upanishads were far too deeply im-
pressed with the real truth of their teaching to
claim for it any adventitious or miraculous sanction.
Unfortunately they could not prevent their less inspired
and less convinced followers from ascribing to their
utterances an inspired, a sacred, nay a miraculous
character.

Plato’s Mythological language.

It cannot be denied that the similarity between
Plato’s language and that of the Upanishads is some-
times very startling. Plato, as you know, likes to
clothe his views on the soul in mythological phrase-
ology, just as the authors of the Upanishads do, nor
can I see what other language was open to them. It
is an absurd anachronism, if some would-be critics of
ancient religions and ancient philosophies fasten with
an air of intellectual superiority on this mythological
phraseology, and speak contemptuously of the childish
fables of Plato and other ancient sages as unworthy
of the serious consideration of our age. Who could
ever have believed, they say, that a soul could grow
wings, or lose her wings. Who could have believed
that there was a bridge between earth and heaven,
and that a beautiful maiden was standing at the end
of it to receive the soul of the departed ? Should w T e
not rather say, Who can he so obtuse as not to see
that those who used such language were trying to
express a deep truth, namely, that the soul would be
lifted up by noble thoughts and noble deeds, as if by
wings, and that the highest judge to judge the
soul after death would he a man’s own conscience,
standing before him in all its beauty and innocence,
like the most beautiful and innocent maiden of fifteen
C4) p

210

LECTUBE VII.

years. Think only of the intellectual efforts that
were required before even such parables could have
been thought of, and then instead of wondering at the
language in which they were expressed, we shall
wonder rather that anybody could have misunder-
stood them, and have asked to have such simple and
transparent parables declared.

The Tale of the Soul.

Plato asserts without fear of contradiction that the
soul is immortal. The Upanishads hardly assert it,
because they cannot conceive that doubt is possible
on that point. ‘Who could say that the soul was
mortal V Mortal means decay of a material organic
body, it clearly has no sense if applied to the soul.

‘ I have heard/ Plato writes, c from men and women
wise in divine matters a true tale as I think, and a
noble one. My informants are those priests and
priestesses whose aim is to be able to render an ac-
count of the subjects with which they deal. They
are supported also by Pindar and many other poets —
by all, I may say, who are truly inspired . Their
teaching is that the soul of man is immortal ; that it
comes to an end of one form of existence, which men
call dying, and then is born again, but never perishes.
Since then the soul is immortal 1 , and has often been
born, and has seen the things here on earth and the
things in Hades ; all things, in short there is nothing
which it has not learned, so that it is no marvel that
it should be possible for it to recall what it certainly
knew before, about virtue and other topics. For since
all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things,
1 Westcott, Religious Thought in the West , p. 27. See also Anthro-
pological Religion , p. 821.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

211

there is no reason why a man who has recalled one
fact only, which men call learning, should not by his
own power find out everything else, should he be
courageous, and not lose heart in the search. For
seeking and learning is all an art of recollection.’

The next passage occurs in the Phaedrus, where we
meet with the myth of the chariot, guided by a
charioteer, and drawn by two winged steeds, of which
in the case of man, the one is good, the other bad.
I must give you some of Plato's sentences in full, in
order to be able to compare them afterwards with
certain passages from the Upanishads.

The Charioteer and the Horses.

Plato (Phaedrus 246, transL, p. 123) says : £ Enough
of the soul’s immortality, her form is a theme of
divine and large discourse ; the tongue of man may,
however, speak of this briefly, as in a figure. Let our
figure be a composite nature — a pair of winged horses
and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the
charioteer of the gods are all of them noble, and of
noble breed, but out horses are mixed ; moreover, our
charioteer drives them in a pair, and one of them is
noble and of noble origin, and the other is ignoble
and of ignoble origin, and the driving, as might be
expected, is no easy matter with us/

If we turn to the KatAa-Upanishad III. 3, we read
there : ‘ Know the soul to be sitting in the chariot,
the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the
charioteer, and the mind the reins. The senses they
call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads . . .
He who has no understanding, and he whose mind
(the reins) is never firmly held, his senses (horses) are

212

LECTUKE VIL

unmanageable, like vicious horses of a charioteer.
But he who has understanding and whose mind is
always firmly held, his senses are under control, like
good horses of a charioteer. He who has no under-
standing, who is unmindful and always impure, never
reaches the goal, but enters into the round of births
(samsSra). But he who has understanding, who is
mindful and always pure, reaches indeed the goal,
from whence he is not born again’ (from whence
there is no return).

Some people have thought that the close coincidence
between the simile used by Plato and by the Upani-
shad, and the resemblance is certainly very close,
shows that there must have been some kind of his-
torical contact even at that early time between the
religious thought of India and the philosophical
thought of Greece. We cannot deny the possibility of
such a view, though we must confess our ignorance as
to any definite channel through which Indian thought
could have reached the shores of Greece at that period,.

The Procession of the Gods.

Let us now explore Plato’s speculations about the
soul a little further. There is his splendid description
of the procession of the gods in heaven, a myth, if you
like, but a myth full of meaning, as every myth was
meant to be.

Zeus, we read, advances first, driving his winged
car, ordering all things and superintending them. A
host of deities and spirits follow him, marshalled in
eleven bodies, for Hestia remains alone in the dwell-
ing of the gods. Many then and blessed are the
spectacles and movements within the sphere of heaven

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

213

which the gods go through, each fulfilling his own
function ; and whoever will and can, follows them, for
envy is a stranger to the divine company. But when
they afterwards proceed to a banquet, they advance
by what is now a steep course along the inner cir-
cumference of the heavenly vault. The chariots of
the gods being well balanced and well driven, advance
easily, others with difficulty; for the vicious horse,
unless the charioteer has thoroughly broken it, weighs
down the car by his proclivity towards the earth.
Whereupon the soul is put to the extremity of toil
and effort. F or the souls of the immortals, when thej T
reach the summit, go outside and stand upon the sur-
face of heaven, and as they stand there, the revolution
of the sphere bears them round, and they contemplate
the objects that are beyond it. That supercelestial
realm no earthly poet ever yet sung or will sing in
worthy strains. It is occupied by the colourless,
shapeless, intangible, absolute essence w T hich reason
alone can contemplate, and which is the one object
of true knowledge. The divine mind, therefore, when
it sees after an interval that which really is, is
supremely happy, and gains strength and enjoyment
by the contemplation of the True (Satyam), until the
circuit of the revolution is completed, in the course of
which it obtains a clear vision of the absolute (ideal)
justice, temperance, and knowledge ; and when it has
thus been feasted by the sight of the essential truth of
all things, the soul again enters within the vault of
heaven and returns home.

Now here I must again stop for a moment, to point
out a significant coincidence between Plato and the
Upanishads.

214

LECTtl&E VII.

Belief in metempsychosis in Plato and the Upanishads.

You may remember that the Upanishads represent
the soul, even after it has reached the abode of the
Fathers, as liable to return to a new round of exist-
ences, and how this led in India to a belief in metem-
psychosis. Now let us see how Plato arrives by the
same road, yet quite independently, at the same con-
clusion 1 :

£ This is the life of the gods/ he says, ‘ but of other
souls that which follows God best and is likest to him
lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world
and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed
by the steeds and with difficulty beholding true being
(to 02/=satyam), while another rises and falls, and sees
and again fails to see, by reason of the unruliness of the
steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after
the upper world, and they all follow ; but not being
strong enough, they are carried round in the deep
below, plunging, treading on one another, striving to
be first, and there is confusion and extremity of effort,
and many of them are lamed and have their wings
broken through the ill driving of the charioteer ; and
all of them after a fruitless toil depart, without being
initiated into the mysteries of the true being ( rrjs tov
ovtos dias), and departing feed on opinion. The reason
of their great desire to behold the plain of truth is
that the food which is suited to the highest part of
the soul comes out of that meadow ; and the wing on
which the souls soar is nourished with this. And
there is a law of destiny that the soul which attains
any vision of truth in company -with the god is

1 Phaedrus, p. 248, translated by Professor Jowett.

ESCHATOLOGT OF PLATO.

215

preserved from harm until the nest period, and if
attaining, is always unharmed. But when she is un-
able to follow, and fails to bebold the vision of truth,
and through some ill hap sinks beneath the double
load of forgetfulness and vice, and her feathers fall
from her, and she drops to earth, then the law ordains
that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into
any other animal but only into man, and the soul
which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth
as a philosopher or artist, or some musical and loving
nature ; that which has seen truth in the second degree
shall be a righteous king or lordly warrior ; the soul
which is of the third class shall be a politician or
economist or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of
gymnastic toils or a physician ; the fifth a prophet or
hierophant; to the sixth a poet or some other imitative
artist will be appropriate ; to the seventh the life of
an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a
sophist or demagogue ; to the ninth that of a tyrant ;
all these are states of probation, in which he who
lives righteously improves, and he who lives un-
righteously deteriorates his lot/

The Nine Classes of Plato and Mann.

I have already pointed out in a former lecture the
curious parallelism between Indian and Greek thought.
You may remember that Manu also establishes ex-
actly the same number of classes, namely nine, and
that we could judge of the estimation in which his
contemporaries held certain occupations by the place
which he assigned to each. Plato places the philoso-
pher first, the tyrant last; Manu places kings and
warriors in the fifth class, and assigns the third class

216

LECTURE VII.

to hermits, ascetics, and Brahmans, while he reserves
the first class to Brahman and other gods. Thus you
find here also as before a general similarity, but like-
wise very characteristic differences.

Plato then continues: c Ten thousand years must
elapse before the soul can return to the place from
whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in
less ; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true,
or the soul of a lover, who is not without philosophy,
may acquire wings in the third recurring period of a
thousand years ; and if they choose this life three
times in succession, then they have their wings given
them, and go away at the end of three thousand years.
But the others receive judgment, when they have com-
pleted their first life, and after the judgment they go,
some of them to the houses of correction which are
under the earth, and are punished; others to some
place in heaven, where they are lightly borne by
justice, and then they live in a manner worthy of the
life which they led here when in the form of men.
And at the end of the first thousand years the good
souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots
and choose their second life, and they may take any
which they like/

Here there are not many points of similarity be-
tween Plato and Manu, except that we see how
Plato also admits places of punishment and correc-
tion which we may call Hells, in addition to the
inevitable chain of cause and effect which determines
the fate of the soul in its migrations after death. In
another passage Plato (Phaedo 113 ) gives a more de-
tailed account, not quite worthy of a philosopher, of
these hells and of the punishments inflicted on evil-

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

217

doers. Here the souls are supposed to become purified
and chastened, and when they have suffered their well-
deserved penalties, they receive the rewards of their
good deeds according to their deserts. ‘ Those, however,
who are considered altogether incorrigible, are hurled
into Tartarus, and they never come out. Others, after
suffering in Tartarus for a year, may escape again if
those vrhom they have injured pardon them. Those
on the contrary who have been pre-eminent for holiness
of life are released from this earthly prison and go to
their pure home which is above and dwell in the purer
earth ; and those who have duly purified themselves with
philosophy, live henceforth altogether without the body,
in mansions fairer than these, — which may not be de-
scribed and of which the time -would fail me to tell- 9

Human Souls migrating 1 into Animal Bodies.

We now come to what has always been considered
the most startling coincidence between Plato and the
philosophers of India, namely, the belief in the migra-
tion of souls from human into animal bodies. Though
u'e have become accustomed to this idea, it cannot be
denied that its first conception was startling. Several
explanations have been attempted to account for it.
It has often been supposed that a belief in ancestral
spirits and ghosts haunting their former homes is at
the bottom of it all. But judging from the first
mention of this kind of metempsychosis in the Upa-
nishads, we saw that it was really based on purely
moral grounds. We find the first general allusion to
it in the KatAa-Upanishad.

There we read (H. 5) : f Fools dwelling in darkness,
wise in their own conceit and puffed up with vain

218

LECTURE TIL

knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and
fro, like blind men led by the blind.

‘ The Hereafter never rises before the eyes of the
careless child, deluded by the delusion of wealth.

4 This is the world, he thinks, there is no other, and
thus he falls again and again under my sway' (the
sway of death).

The speaker here is Yama, the ruler of the Fathers,
afterwards the god of death, and he who punishes
the wicked in Hell.

With Plato also the first idea of metempsychosis or
the migration of human souls into animal bodies seems
to have been suggested by ethical considerations. At
the end of the first thousand years, he says, the good
souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots
and choose their second life, and they may take any
which they like 1 . The soul of man may pass into the
life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the
man. Here it is clearly supposed that a man would
choose according to his taste and character, so that his
next life should correspond to his character, as formed
in a former life. This becomes still clearer when we
read the story of Er at the end of the Republic.

The Story of Er.

You all remember Er 2 , the son of Armenius, the
Pamphylian, who was slain in battle, and ten days
afterwards when the bodies of the dead were taken
up already in a state of corruption, his body was
found unaffected by decay and carried away home to

1 Phaedrus, p. 249.

2 For similar stories see Liebreeht in his Notes to Gervasius
of Tilbury, p. 89.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

219

be burnt. But on the twelfth, day, as he was lying
on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told all he
had seen in the other world. His soul, he said, left
the body and he then went on a long journey with a
great company. I cannot read to you the whole of
this episode — you probably all know it — at all events
it is easily accessible, and a short abstract will suffice
for our purposes. Er relates how he came first of all
to a mysterious place, where there were two openings
in the earth, and over against them two openings in
the heaven. And there were judges sitting between,
to judge the souls, who sent the good souls up to
heaven, and the bad down into the earth. And while
these souls went down into the earth and up to heaven
by one opening, others came out from the other
opening descending from heaven or ascending from
the earth, and they met in a meadow and embraced
each other, and told the one of the joys of heaven, and
the others of the sufferings beneath the earth during
the thousand years they had lived there. After
tarrying seven days on the meadow the spirits had
to proceed further. This further journey through the
spheres of heaven is fully described, till it ends with
the souls finding themselves in the presence of the
three Fates, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos. But here,
instead of receiving their lot for a new life as a
natural consequence of their former deeds, or mis-
deeds, they are allowed to choose their own lot, and
they choose it naturally according to their experience
in a former life, and according to the bent of their
character as formed there. Some men, disgusted with
mankind, prefer to be born as animals, as lions or
eagles, some animals delight in trying their luck as

220

LECTURE VII.

men. Odysseus, the wisest of all, despises the lot of
royalty and wealth, and chooses the quiet life of a
private person, as the happiest lot on earth. Then
after passing the desert plain of Forgetfulness, and
the river of Unmindfulness, they are caught by an
earthquake, and driven upwards to their new birth.
Plato then finishes the vision of the Pampkylian Er
with the following words : e Wherefore my counsel is
that we hold for ever to the heavenly way, and follow
after justice and virtue, always considering that the
soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good
and every sort of evil. Then shall we live dear to
one another and to the gods, both while remaining
here and when, like conquerors in the games who go
round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And
it shall be well with us both in this life and in the
pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been
describing/

Coincidences and Differences.

This has justly been called the most magnificent
4 myth in the whole of Plato, a kind of philosophical
apocalypse which has kept alive a belief in immor-
tality among the Greeks, and not among the Greeks
only, but among all who became their pupils. There
is no doubt a certain similarity in the broad outlines
of this Platonic myth, illustrating the migration of
the soul after death, with the passages which we
quoted before from the Upanishads. The fact that
Er was a Pamphylian has even been supposed to in-
dicate an Eastern origin of the Platonic legend, but I
cannot persuade myself that we should be justified in
tracing the source of any of Plato's thoughts to India
or Persia. The differences between the Indian and

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

221

the Greek legends seem to me quite as great as their
coincidences. It may seem strange, no doubt, that
human fancy should in Greece as well as in India
have created this myth of the soul leaving the body,
and migrating to the upper or lower regions to receive
its reward or its punishment ; and more particularly
its entrance into animal bodies seems very startling,
when we find it for the first time in Greece as well as
in India. Still it is far easier to suppose that the
same ideas burst forth spontaneously from the same
springs, the fears and hopes of the human heart, than
to admit an exchange of ideas between Indian and
Greek philosophers in historical times. The strongest
coincidence is that between the nine or three times
three classes of the soul’s occupations as admitted by
Manu and by Plato ; and again between the river
Vujara, the Ageless, where a man leaves all his good
and his evil deeds behind him, and the draught of the
Zaramaya oil by which in the Avesta the soul is
supposed to become oblivious of all worldly cares and
concerns before entering paradise ; and again the plain
of Forgetfulness and the river of Unmindfulness
mentioned by Plato ; or still more the river Lethe or
forgetfulness in general Greek mythology. Still, even
this may be a thought that presented itself indepen-
dently to Greek and Indian thinkers. All who be-
lieved the soul to be immortal, had to believe likewise
in the pre-existence of the soul or in its being without
a beginning, and as no soul here on earth has any
recollection of its former existences, a river of Lethe
or forgetfulness, or a river Vi#ar& and the oil of forget-
fulness, were not quite unnatural expedients to account
for this.

222

LECTUBE VII.

Truth underlying 1 Myth.

No one would go so far as to say, because some of
these theories are the same in India and in Greece,
and sprang up independently in both countries, that
therefore they are inevitable or true. All we have
any right to say is that they are natural, and that
there is something underlying them which, if ex-
pressed in less mythological language, may stand the
severest test of philosophical examination.

In order to see this more clearly, in order to satisfy
ourselves as to what kind of truth the unassisted
human mind may reach on these subjects, it may be
useful to examine here the theories of some of the
so-called savage races. In their case the very possi-
bility of an historical intercourse with India or Greece
is excluded.

T&e Haidas on the Immortality of the Soul.

I choose for this purpose first of all the Haidas,
who inhabit the Charlotte Islands and have lately
been described to us by the Rev. C. Harrison, who is
thoroughly conversant with their language.

According to his description the religion of these
savage Haidas would seem to be very like the religion
of the ancient Persians. They believe in two prin-
cipal deities, one the god of light, who is good, the
other the god of darkness, who is evil. Besides these
two, there are a number of smaller deities whom the
Haidas pray to and to whom they offer small sacri-
fices. They fear these smaller deities, such as the
god of the sun and of the sea, more than the two
great powers of light and darkness, though these two
are supposed to have created everything, not exclud-
ing even these smaller deities.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

228

The Haidas "believe in the immortality of the soul,
and their ideas about the journey of the soul after
death are nearly as elaborate as those of the Upani-
shads. When a good Haida is about to die, he sees a
canoe manned by some of his departed friends, who
come with the tide to bid him welcome to their
domain. They are supposed to be sent by the god of
death. The djing man sees them and is rejoiced to
know that after a period passed within the city of
death, he will with his friends be welcomed to the
kingdom of the god of light. His friends call him
and bid him come. They say: ‘Come with us, come
into the land of light ; come into the land of great
things, of wonderful things ; come into the land of
plenty where hunger is unknown ; come with us and
rest for evermore. . . . Come with us into our land
of sunshine and be a great chief attended with
numerous slaves. Come with us now, the spirits say,
for the tide is about to ebb and we must depart/ At
last the soul of the deceased leaves his body to join
the company of his former friends, while his body is
buried with great pomp and splendour. The Haidas
believe that the soul leaves the body immediately
after death, and is taken possession of either by Chief
Cloud or Chief Death. The good soul is taken pos-
session of by Chief Death, and during its sojourn in
the domain of Death, it is taught many wonderful
things and becomes initiated into the mysteries of
heaven (just as the soul of ISTa&iketas was in the
domain of Yama). At last he becomes the essence of
the purest light and is able to revisit bis friends on
earth. At the close of the twelve months’ probation
the time of his redemption from the kingdom of

224

LECTURE TIL

Death arrives. As it is impossible that the pure
essence of light should come into contact with a
depraved material body, the good Indian assumes
its appearance only, and then the gates are thrown
open and his soul which by this time has assumed
the shape of his earthly body, but clothed in the light
of the kingdom of light, is discovered to the Chief of
Light by Chief Death, in whose domains he has been
taught the customs to be observed in heaven.

The bad Indian in the region of the clouds is tor-
tured continually. In the first place his soul has to
witness the chief of that region feasting on his dead
body until it is entirely consumed. Secondly, he is
so near to this world that he evinces a longing desire
to return to his friends and gain their Sympathy.
Thirdly, he has the dread of being conducted to Hell
(Hetywanlana) ever before his mind. No idea of
atonement for his past wicked life is ever permitted,
since his soul after death is incapable of reformation
and consequently incapable of salvation. This is
very different from Plato and the Upanishads, where
there is always a hope of final salvation.

Sometimes permission is granted to souls in the
clouds to revisit the earth. Then they can only be
seen by the Saaga, the great medicine man, who
describes them as destitute of all clothing. They are
looked upon as wicked and treacherous spirits, and
the medicine man's duty is to prevent them entering
any of the houses ; and not only so, but as soon as the
Saaga makes the announcement that a certain soul
has descended from the clouds, no one will leave their
homes, because the sight of a wicked soul would cause
sickness and trouble, and his touch death. Some-

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

225

times it happens that the souls in the domain of
Death are not made pure and holy within twelve
months, and yet when their bodies died they were
not wicked enough to be captured by Chief Cloud.
Then it becomes necessary that the less sanctified
souls return to earth and become regenerated. Every
soul not worthy of entering heaven is sent back to
his friends and reborn at the first opportunity. The
Saaga enters the house to see the newly-born baby,
and his attendant spirits announce to him that in
that child is the soul of one of their departed
friends who died during the preceding years. Their
new life has to be such as will subject them to
retribution for the misdeeds of their past life (the
same idea which we met with in India and in
Greece), and thus the purgation of souls has to be
carried on in successive migrations until they are
suitable to enter the region of eternal light.

It sometimes happens that some souls are too
depraved and wicked after twelve months in the
clouds to be conducted to Hetywanlana; they also
are sent back to this earth, but they are not allowed
to re-enter a human body. They are allowed to enter
the bodies of animals and fish, and compelled to
undergo great torture.

We see here how the Haidas arrived at the idea of
metempsychosis very much by the same road on
which the Hindus were led to it. It was as a
punishment that human souls were supposed to enter
the bodies of certain animals. We likewise meet
among the Haidas with the idea which we discovered
in the Upauishads and in Plato, that certain souls
are born again as human beings in order to undergo

(4) Q

226

LECTURE VII.

a new purgation before they could be allowed to
enter the region of eternal light. This intermediate
stage, the simplest conception of a purgatory, for souls
who are neither good enough for heaven nor bad
enough for hell, occurs in the later Persian literature
also. It is there called the place of the Hamistak&n,
the intermediate place between heaven and hell,
reserved for those souls whose good works exactly
counterbalance their sins, and where they remain in
a stationary state till the final resurrection 1 .

The Polynesians on t2ie Immortality of the Soul.

I have chosen the Haidas, the aborigines of the
North-west coast of America, as a race that could
not possibly have been touched by one single ray of
that civilisation which had its seat in Mesopotamia,
or in Persia, or in Egypt or Greece. Their thoughts
on the immortality of the soul, and of the fate which
awaits the soul after death, are clearly of independent
growth, and if on certain important points they agree
with the views of the Upanishads, the Zenda vesta, or
Plato, that agreement, though it does not prove their
truth, proves at all events what I call their natural-
ness, their conformity with the hopes and fears of the
human heart.

I shall now take another race, equally beyond the
reach of Mesopotamian, Persian, Egyptian, and Greek
thought, and as far removed as possible from the
inhabitants of North-western America, I mean the
races inhabiting the Polynesian Islands. I choose
them because they give us a measure of what amount
of similarity is possible on religious or philosophical
1 Hang, l.c. p. 389 n.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

227

topics without our having to admit either a common
historical origin, or an actual borrowing at a later
time. I choose them for another reason also, namely,
because they are one of the few races of whom we
possess scholarlike and trustworthy accounts from
the pen of a missionary who has thoroughly mastered
the language and thoughts of the people, and who
has proved himself free from the prejudices arising
from theological or scientific partisanship. I mean
the Rev. W. Wyatt Gill. Speaking more particularly
of the islands of the Hervey group, he says :

6 Each island had some variety of custom in relation
to the dead. Perhaps the chiefs of Atiu were the
most outrageous in mourning. I knew one to mourn
for seven years for an only child, living all that time
in a hut in the vicinity of the grave, and allowing
his hair and nails to grow, and his body to remain
unwashed. This was the wonder of all the islanders.
In general, all mourning ceremonies were over in a
year/

But what did these islanders think about the life
to come? It is seldom that we can get a clear
account of the ideas of savages concerning the fate
of their departed friends. Many avoid the subject
altogether, and even those who are ready to com-
municate their thoughts freely to white men, often
fail to be understood by their questioners. Mr. Gill
is in this respect a favourable exception, and this is
what he tells us about the conception of the spirit-
world, as entertained by his Polynesian friends :

6 Spirit-land proper is underneath, where the sun-
god Ra reposes when his daily task is done/ This
reminds us of Yama, the son of Vivasvat (the sun),

Q 2

228

LECTURE VII.

who by the Vedic Indians was believed to dwell in
the world of the Fathers and to be the ruler of
the spirits of the departed. This spirit-world £ is
variously termed Po (Night), Avaiki, HawaPi, Ha-
waiki, or home of the ancestors. Still, all warrior
spirits, i.e. those who have died a violent death, are
said to aacencl to their happy homes in the ten
heavens above. Popularly , death in any form is
referred to as “going into night,” in contrast with
day (ao), i.e. life. Above and beneath are numerous
countries and a variety of inhabitants — invisible to
mortal eye ; but these are but a facsimile of what
we see around us now.

‘The Samoan heaven was designated Pulotu or
Purotu , and was supposed to be under the sea. The
Mangaian warrior hoped to “leap into the expanse, 33
“to dance the warrior’s dance in Tairi 33 (above), “to
inhabit Speck-land (Poepo6) 33 in perfect happiness.
The Earotongan warrior looked forward to a place
in the house of Tiki, in which are assembled the brave
of past ages, who spend their time in eating, drinking,
dancing, or sleeping. The Aitutakian brave went to
a good land (Iva) under the guardianship of the be-
nevolent Tukaitaua, to chew sugar-cane for ever with
uncloyed appetite. Tahitians had an elysium named
<c Miru. 33 Society Islanders looked forward to “ Eohutu
noanoa, 33 i.e. “ sweet-scented Eohutu, 33 full of fruit and
flowers.

‘ At Mangaia the spirits of those who ignobly “ died
on a pillow 331 wandered about disconsolately over the
rocks near the margin of the ocean, until the day
appointed by their leader comes (once a year), when

1 I te urunga piro, i. e. a natural death.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

229

they follow the sun-god Ra over the ocean and de-
scend in his train to the under-world. As a rule, these
ghosts were well disposed to their own living relatives;
but often became vindictive if a pet child was ill-
treated by a step-mother or other relatives, &c. But
the esoteric teaching of the priests ran thus : Unhappy 1
ghosts travel over the pointed rocks round the island
until they reach the extreme edge of the cliff facing
the setting sun, when a large wave approaches to the
base, and at the same moment a gigantic cc hua 5> tree
(Fagraea lerteriana), covered with fragrant blossoms,
springs up from Avaiki to receive these disconsolate
human spirits. Even at this last moment, with feet
almost touching the fatal tree, a friendly voice may
send the spirit-traveller back to life and health.
Otherwise, he is mysteriously impelled to climb the
particular branch reserved for his own tribe, and
conveniently brought nearest to him. Immediately
the human soul is safely lodged 1 upon this gigantic
u buaF the deceitful tree goes down with its living
burden to the nether- world. Akaanga and his assis-
tants catch the luckless ghost in a net, half drown it in a
lake of fresh water, and then usher it into the presence
of dread Mira, mistress of the nether- world, where it is
made to drink of her intoxicating bowl. The drunken
ghost is borne off to the ever-burning oven, cooked,
and devoured by Miru, her son, and four peerless
daughters. The refuse is thrown to her servants,
Akaanga and others. So that, at Mangaia, the end of
the coward is annihilation, or, at all events, digestion.

‘At Rarotonga the luckless spirit-traveller who had

1 Because they had the misfortune * to die on a pillow/ and
because they had to leave their old pleasant haunts and homes.

230

LECTURE VII.

no present for Tiki was compelled to stay outside the
house where the brave of past ages are assembled, in
rain and darkness for ever, shivering with cold and
hunger. Another view is, that the grand rendezvous
of ghosts was on a ridge of rocks facing the setting
sun. One tribe skirted the sea margin until it reached
the fatal spot. Another (the tribe of Tangiia, on the
eastern part of Rarotonga) traversed the mountain
range forming the backbone of the island until the
same point of departure was attained. Members of
the former tribe clambered on an ancient <c bua” tree
(still standing). Should the branch chance to break,
the ghost is immediately caught in the net of “ Muru.”
But it sometimes happens that a lively ghost tears
the meshes and escapes for a while, passing on by a
resistless inward impulse towards the outer edge of
the reef, in the hope of traversing the ocean. But in
a straight line from the shore is a round hollow, where
Akaanga’s net is concealed. In this the very few
who escape out of the hands of Muru are caught with-
out fail. The delighted demons (taae) take the captive
ghost out of the net, dash his brains out on the sharp
coral, and carry him off in triumph to the shades to eat.

4 For the tribe of Tangiia an iron- wood tree was
reserved. The ghosts that trod on the green branches
of this tree came back to life, whilst those who had
the misfortune to crawl on the dead branches were at
once caught in the net of Muru or Akaanga, brained,
cooked, and devoured !

f Ghosts of cowards, and those who were impious
at Aitutaki, were doomed likewise to furnish a feast
to the inexpressibly ugly Miru 1 and her followers.

1 Miru of Mangaia and Aitutaki is the Muru of Rarotonga.

ESCHATOLOGY OF PLATO.

231

£ The ancient faith of the Hervey Islanders was
substantially the same. Nor did it materially differ
from that of the Tahitian and Society Islanders, the
variations being such as we might expect when portions
of the same great family had been separated from
each other for ages/

We see in these Polynesian legends a startling
mixture of coarse and exalted ideas as to the fate of
the soul after death.

Mr. Gill says that there is no trace of transmigra-
tion of human souls in the Eastern Pacific. Yet he
tells us that the spirits of the dead are fabled to have
assumed, temporarily, and for a specific purpose, the
form of an insect, bird, fish, or cloud. He adds that
gods, specially the spirits of deified men, were believed
permanently to reside in, or to be incarnate in, sharks,
sword-fish, &c M eels, the octopus, the yellow and
black-spotted lizards, several kinds of birds and
insects. The idea of souls dwelling in animal bodies
cannot therefore be said to have been unknown to the
inhabitants of the Polynesian Islands.

If it is asked, what we gain from a comparison of
the opinions on the fate of the soul after death as
entertained not only by highly civilised nations, such
as the Hindus, the Persians, and the Greeks, but like-
wise by tribes on a very low level of social life, such
as the Haidas and Polynesians, my answer is that
we learn from it, that a belief in a soul and in the
immortality of the soul is not simply the dream of
a few philosophical poets or poetical philosophers, but
the spontaneous outcome of the human mind, when
brought face to face with the mystery of death.

232

LECTURE VII.

TJie last result of Physical Beligion.

The last result of what I called Physical Helio-bn
and Anthropological Eeligion is this very belief that
the human soul will after death enter the realm of
light, and stand before the throne of God, whatever
name may have been assigned to him. This seems
indeed the highest point that has been reached by
natural religion. But we shall see that one religion
at least, that of the Vedanta, made a decided sten
beyond. ^

LECTURE VIII.

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

Judaism and Buddhism,

I T is strange that the two religions in which we
find nothing or next to nothing about the im-
mortality of the soul or its approach to the throne
of God or its life in the realm of light, should be the
Jewish and the Buddhist, the one pre-eminently mono-
theistic, the other, in the eyes of the Brahmans, almost
purely atheistic. The Old Testament is almost silent,
and to be silent on such a subject admits of one
interpretation only. The Buddhists, however, go even
beyond this. Whatever the popular superstitions of
the Buddhists may have been in India and other
countries, Buddha himself declared in the most
decided way that it was useless, nay, wrong to ask
the question what becomes of the departed after
death. When questioned on the subject, Buddha de-
clined to give any answer. From all the other reli-
gions of the world, however, with these two exceptions,
we receive one and the same answer, namely, that
the highest blessedness of the soul after death consists
in its approaching the presence of God, possibly in
singing praises and offering worship to the Supreme
Being.

234

LECTURE YIII.

The Vedanta Doctrine on True Immortality.

There is one religion only which has made a definite
advance beyond this point. In other religions we
meet indeed with occasional longings for something
beyond this mere assembling round the throne of a
Supreme Being, and singing praises to his name ; nor
have protests been wanting from very early times
against the idea of a God sitting on a throne and
having a right and left hand. But though these
old anthropomorphic ideas, sanctioned by creeds and
catechisms, have been rejected again and again,
nothing has been placed in their stead, and they natu-
rally rise up anew with every new rising generation.
In India alone the human mind has soared beyond
this point, at first by guesses and postulates, such
as we find in some of the Upanishads, afterwards by
strict reasoning, such as we find in the Ved&nta-sfitras,
and still more in the commentary of $ankara. The
Vedanta, whether we call it a religion or a philosophy,
has completely broken with the effete anthropo-
morphic conception of God and of the soul as ap-
proaching the throne of God, and has opened vistas
which were unknown to the greatest thinkers of
Europe.

These struggles after a pure conception of Deity
began at a very early time. I have often quoted the
passage where a Vedic poet says —
c That which is one, the poets call by many names,

They call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan/

(Rv. I. 164, 46.)

You observe how that which is spoken of as one
is here, as early as the hymns of the Rig-veda, no

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

235

longer a masculine, no longer personal, in the human
sense of the word ; it has not even a name.

Personality, a Limitation of t&e Godhead.

No doubt this step will by many be considered not
as a step in advance, but as a backward step. We
often hear it said that an impersonal God is no God
at all. And yet, if we use our words wisely, if we do
not simply repeat words, but try to realise their
meaning, we can easily understand why even those
ancient seekers after truth declined to ascribe human
personality to the Deity. People are apt to forget
that human personality always implies limitation.
Hence all the personal gods of ancient mythology
were limited. Jupiter was not Apollo, Indra was not
Agni. When people speak of human personality, they
often include in it every kind of limitation, not only
age, sex, language, nationality, inherited character,
knowledge, but also outward appearance and facial
expression. All these qualifications were applied to
the ancient gods, but with the dawn of a higher con-
ception of the Deity a reaction set in. The earliest
philosophers of Greece, who were religious even more
than philosophical teachers, protested, as for instance,
through the mouth of Xenophanes, against the belief
that God, if taken as the highest Deity, could be sup-
posed to be like unto man in body or mind. Even
at the present day the Bishop of London thought it
right and necessary to warn a Christian congregation
against the danger of ascribing personality, in its
ordinary meaning, to God. ‘There is a sense/ he
says \ ‘ in which we cannot ascribe personality to the
1 Temple, Bampton Lectures , p. 57.

236

LECTUEE VIII.

Unknown Absolute Being; for our personality is
of necessity compassed with limitations, and from
these limitations we find it impossible to separate our
conception of person. When we speak of God as a
person, we cannot but acknowledge that this person-
ality far transcends our conceptions. ... If to deny
personality to Him is to assimilate Him to a blind
and dead rule, we cannot but repudiate such denial
altogether. If to deny personality to Him is to
assert His incomprehensibility, we are ready at once
to acknowledge our weakness and incapacity/

It is strange that people should not see that we must
learn, with regard to personality, exactly the same lesson
which we have had to learn with regard to all other
human qualities, when we attempt to transfer them
to God, We may say that God is wise and just, holy
and pitiful, but He is all this in a sense which passes
human understanding. In the same way, when we
say that God is personal, we must learn that His
personality must be high above any human person-
ality, high above our understanding, always supposing
that we understand what we mean when we speak
of our own personality. Some people say that the
Deity must be at least personal ; yes, but at the same
time the Deity must be at least above all those limita-
tions which are inseparable from human personality.

We may be fully convinced that God cannot be
personal in the human sense of the word, and yet
as soon as we place ourselves in any relation to God,
we must for the time being conceive Him as personal.
We cannot divest ourselves of our human nature.
We know that the sun does not rise, but we cannot
help seeing it rise. We know that the sky is not

TBUE IMMOBTALITY.

237

blue, and yet we cannot help seeing it blue. Even the
Bishop can only tell us how not to think about God,
but howto think about Him except as personal he does
not tell us. When we see Xenophanes attempting to
represent this Supreme Being as (r^aipoeifo or like a
ball, we see what any attempts of this kind would
lead to. The same intellectual struggle which we
can watch in the words of a living Bishop, we can
follow also in the later utterances of the Yedic poets.
They found in their ancient faith names of ever so
many personal gods, but they began to see that these
were all but imperfect names of that which alone is,
the Unknown Absolute Being, as Dr. Temple calls it,
the Ekam sat of the Vedic sages.

Struggle for MgSaer conception of tlxe Godhead.

How then was the Ekam sat, to h ml to 6v , to be
called? Many names were attempted. Some Vedic
sages called it Pra?ia, that is breath, which comes
nearest to the Greek breath or spizit or soul.

Others confessed their inability to comprehend it
under any name. That it is, and that it is one, is
readily admitted. But as to any definite knowledge
or definite name of it, the Vedic sages declare their
ignorance quite as readily as any modern agnostic.
This true agnosticism, this docta ignorant ia of medi-
aeval divines, this consciousness of man’s utter help-
lessness and inability to arrive at any knowledge of
God, is most touchingly expressed by some of these
ancient Vedic poets.

I shall quote some of their utterances.

Bv. X. 82, 7. ‘You will not find Him who has;
created these things ; something else stands between

LECTURE VIII.

you and Him. Enveloped in mist and with faltering
voices the poets walk along, rejoicing in life/

Rv. 1. 164, 4-6, c Who has seen the First-born, when
He who had no bones, i. e. no form, bore him that had
bones. The life, the blood, and the soul of the earth —
where are they? Who went to ask it to one who knew
it ? Simple-minded, not comprehending it in my mind,
I ask for the hidden places of the gods. . . . Ignorant
I ask the knowing sages, that I, the not-knowing,
may know, what is the One in the form of the Un-
born which has settled these six spaces/

Still stronger is this confession as repeated again
and again in the Upanishads.

For instance, Sve t. Up. IV. 19. ‘ No one has grasped
Him above, or across, or in the middle. There is no
likeness of Him whose name is Great Glory/

Or, MuraA Up. HI. 1,8. ‘ He is not apprehended by
the eye, nor by speech, nor by the other senses, not
by penance or good works/

Ken. Up. I. 3. ‘ Thy eye does not go thither, nor
speech, nor mind. We do not know, we do not under-
stand, how any one can teach it. It is different from
the known, it is also above the unknown, thus we
have heard from those of old who taught us this/
-STAand. Up. IV. 3, 6. ‘ Mortals see Him not, though
He dwells in many places/

In the Taitt. Up. II. 4, it is said that words turn
back from it with the mind, without having reached
it — and in another place, Ka^A. Up. HI. 15, it is dis-
tinctly called nameless, intangible, formless, imperish-
able. And again, Mu nd. Up. I, 1, 6, invisible, and not
to be grasped.

These very doubts and perplexities are most touch-

TBUE IMMOBTALITY. '

239

ing. I doubt whether we find anything like them any-
where else. On one point only these ancient searchers
after God seem to have no doubt whatever, namely,
that this Being is one and without a second. We saw
It when the poet said, 4 That which is one the poets
call it in many ways, 5 and in the Upanishads, this
One without a second becomes a constant name of
the Supreme Being. Thus the Ka th. Up. V. 12, sa}^s :
'There is one ruler, the soul within all things, who
makes the one form manifold/ And the Svefcaavatara-
Up. VI. 11, adds: 4 He is the one God, hidden in all
things, all-pervading, the soul within all beings,
watching over all w T orks, dwelling in all, the witness,
the pereeiver, the only one, free from all qualities, He
is the one ruler of many who (seem to act, but really)
do not act/ -

The A7And. Up. VI. 2, 1, says: £ In the beginning
there was that only which is, one only, without a
second ; 5 and the Brih. Ar. Up. IV. 3, 32, adds : c That
one seer (subject) is an ocean, and without any duality/

MumZ. Up. II. 2, 5. £ In Him the heaven, the earth,
and the sky are -woven, the mind also with all the
senses. Know Him alone as the Self, and leave off
other names. He is the bridge of the Immortal, i. e.
the bridge by which we reach our own immortality/

These are mere gropings, gropings in the dark, no
doubt ; but even thus, where do we see such gropings
after God except in India ?

The human mind, however, cannot long go on with-
out names, and some of the names given to the One
Unknowable and Unnameable Being, which we shall
now have to examine, have caused and are still caus-
ing great difficulty.

240

LECTURE VIII.

Hame for the highest Godhead, Brahman.

One of the best-known names is Brahman, originally
a neuter, but used often promiscuously as a masculine
also. It would be an immense help if we were certain
of the etymology of Brahman. We should then know,
what is always most important, its first conception, for
it is clear, and philosophers ought by this time to have
learnt it, that every word must have meant at first
that which it means etymologically. Many attempts
have been made to discover the etymology of Brahman,
but neither that nor the successive growth of its mean-
ings can be ascertained with perfect certainty. It has
been supposed 1 that certain passages in the Ka£/za-
Upanishad (II 13 ; VI. 17) were meant to imply a
derivation of brahman from the root barh or brih,
to tear off, as if brahman meant at first what was
torn off or separated, absolutum ; but there is no other
evidence for the existence of this line of thought in
India. Others have derived brahman from the root
barh or brih, in the sense of swelling or growing.
Thus Dr. Haug, in his paper on Brahman und die
Brahmanen , published in 1871, supposed that brah-
man must have meant originally what grows, and he
saw a proof of this in the corresponding Zend word
Baresman (Barsom), a bundle of twigs (virgae) used
by the priests, particularly at the Izeshan sacrifices.
He then assigns to brahman the more abstract mean-
ing of growth and welfare, and what causes growth
and welfare, namely, sacred songs. In this way he
holds that brahman came to mean the Veda, the holy
word. Lastly, he assigns to brahman the meaning of

1 Deussen, Vedanta , p. 128.

TBCE IMMOETALITr.

241

force as manifested in nature, and that of universal
force* or the Supreme Being, that which, according to
Sankara, * is eternal, pure, intelligent, free, omniscient

and omnipotent/

When by a well-known grammatical process this
neuter brahman (nom. brahma) is changed into the
masculine brahman (nom. brahma), it comes to mean
a man conversant with Brahman, a member of the
priestly caste; secondly, a priest charged with the
special duty of superintending the sacrifice, but like-
wise the personal creator, the universal force con-
ceived as a personal god, the same as Piw/apati, and
in later times one of the Trimurti, Brahman, Vishnu,
and $iva. So far Dr. Hang.

Dr. Muir, in his Sanskrit Texts, i. p. 240, starts
from brahman in the sense of prayer, hymn, while he
takes the derivative masculine brahman as meaning
one who prays, a poet or sage, then a priest in
general, and lastly a priest charged with special
duties.

Professor Both also takes the original sense of
Brahman to have been prayer, not, however, praise
or thanksgiving, but that kind of invocation which,
with the force of will directed to the god, desires to
draw him to the worshipper, and to obtain satisfaction
from him.

I must confess that the hymns of the Veda, as we
now read them, are hardly so full of fervent devotion
that they could well be called outbursts. And there
always remains the question why the creative force
of the universe should have been called by the same
name. It seems to me that the idea of creative force
or propelling power might well have been expressed by

(4) B

242

LECTURE VIII.

Brahman, as derived from a root barh 3 , to break
forth, or to drive forth ; but the other brahman, before
it came to mean hymn or prayer, seems to have had
the more general meaning of speech or word. There
are indeed a few indications left to show that the
root barh had the meaning of uttering or speaking.
Brihas-pati, who is also called Brahma^as-pati, is
often explained as Va&as-pati, the lord of speech, so
that brih seems to have been a synonym of va k
But what is still more important is that the Latin
verbum , as I pointed out many years ago, can be
traced back letter by letter to the same root. Nay,
if we accept vridh as a parallel form of vrih, the
English word also can claim the same origin. It
would seem therefore that brahman meant originally
utterance, word, and then only hymn, and the sacred
word, the Veda, while when it is used in the sense
of creative force, it would have been conceived
originally as that which utters or throws forth or
manifests. Tempting as it is, we can hardly suppose
that the ancient framers of the Sanskrit language
had any suspicion of the identity of the Logos pro -
phorikds and endidthetos of the Stoics, or of the world
as word or thought, the Logos of the Creator. But
that they had some recollection of brahman having
originally meant word, can be proved by several pas-
sages from the Veda. I do not attach any importance
to such passages as Brih. At. IV. 1, 2, v&g vai Brah-
ma, speech is Brahma, for Brahman is here in the
same way identified with pr Ma, breath, man as mind,
Mitya, sun, and many other things. But when we

1 Brahma is sometimes combined with bnhat, growing or great,
see Svet. Up. III. 7. ' ~

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

243

read, Rv. I 164, 35, Brahma ayam va/ja h paramam
vjuma, what can be the meaning of Brahma, masc.
being called here the highest heaven, or, it may be,
the highest woof, of speech, if there had not been
some connection between brahman and vaZ.*? There
is another important passage in a hymn addressed to
BWhaspati, the lord of speech, where we read, X.
71, 1; ‘0 Br/haspati (lord of bWh or speech), when
men, giving names, sent forth the first beginning of
speech, then whatever was best and faultless in
them, hidden within them, became manifested through
desire.' I believe therefore that the word brahman
had a double history, one beginning with brahman,
as neuter, to orrm or, the propelling force of the
universe, and leading on to Brahman, masc., as the
creator of the world, who causes all things to burst
forth, later one of the Hindu Triad or Trimurti, con-
sisting of Brahman, /Siva, and Vish?iu; the other
beginning with brah-man, word or utterance, and
gradually restricted to brahman, hymn of praise, ac-
companied by sacrificial offerings, and then, with
change of gender and accent, brahman, he who utters,
prays, and sacrifices, a member of the priestly caste.

Brahman, even when used as a neuter, is often
followed by masculine forms. And there are many
passages where it must remain doubtful whether
Brahman was conceived as an impersonal force, or
as a personal being, nay, as both at the same time.
Thus we read, Taitt. Up. HI. 1,1: £ That from whence
these beings are born, that by which when born they
live, that into which they enter at their death, try to
know that, that is Brahman. 5

In the Atharva-veda X. 2, 25, we read : 4 By whom
R2

244

LECTURE Till.

was this earth ordered, by whom was the upper sky
created ? !f By whom was this uplifted ? ’ &c.

The answer is : c By Brahma was this earth ordered/
&c.

Sometimes Brahman is identified with Pram, breath,
as in Bnh. Ax. Up. III. (s), 9, 9 : £ He asked, who is
the one God? Yac/i/avalkya replied : Breath or spirit,
and he is Brahman.’

Sometimes again it is said that Pram, spirit, arose
from Brahman, as when we read, Mu nd. Up. II. 1, 8 :
£ Brahman swells by means of heat ; hence is produced
food (or matter), from food breath (pram), mind/ &c.

However, this Brahman is only one out of many
names, each representing an attempt to arrive at the
concept of a Supreme Being, free, as much as possible,
from all mythological elements, free from purely
human qualities, free also from sex or gender.

Furuslia.

Another of these names is Purusha, which means
originally man or person. Thus we read, MutuI Up.
II. 1, 1-3 ; £ As from a blazing fire sparks, being like
fire, fly forth a thousandfold, thus are various beings
brought forth from the Imperishable, and return
thither also. That heavenly Person (Purusha) is with-
out body, he is both within and without, not pro-
duced, without breath and without mind, higher than
the high, imperishable. From him is born breath,
(spirit),. mind, and all organs of sense, ether, air, light,
water, and the earth, the support of all.’

Nothing in fact is, to my mind, more interesting
than to watch these repeated attempts at arriving
at higher and higher, purer and purer, concepts of

THUS nOIOETALITT.

245

deity. These so-called heathens knew as well as we
do, that their ancient names were imperfect and un-
worthy of the deity, and though every new attempt
proved but a new failure, yet the very attempts are
creditable, and if we consider the time and the cir-
cumstances under which these struggles took place,
there can hardly be a sight in the whole history of the
human mind more strongly appealing to our sympathy,
and more truly deserving of our most careful study.
Some people may say, that all this lies behind us, but
for that very reason that it lies behind us, it ought to
make us look behind us ; that is to say, it ought to make
us true historians, for after all, history is looking back,
and while looking back on the past of the human race,
reading in it our own history. Every one of us has
had to pass through that very phase of thought through
which the ancient Rishis passed when the early names
and concepts of God were perceived to be too narrow,
too human, too mythological.

Fra?* a, Spirit,

As we had to learn, and have still to learn, that
God is a spirit, the Vedie Indians also spoke of the
highest deity as Prana, here no longer used in the
sense of breath, but of spirit, as for instance, in a
hymn of the Atharva-veda, XI. 4, addressed to Pr&na,
where we read : £ Pr&na is the Lord of all that does
and does not breathe . . . Do not turn away from me,
0 Prana, thou art no other than 1/

Let us translate Pr&na by Spirit or Divine Spirit,
and this would read ; 4 The Divine Spirit is Lord of
all ... 0 Divine Spirit, do not turn away from me ;
thou art no other than L*

246

LECTURE VIII.

Again, we read in the Prasna-Up. II. 13 : £ All this
is in the power of Prim, whatever exists in the three
heavens. Protect ns as a mother protects her sons,
and give ns happiness and wisdom. 5

In the Kaush. Up. III. 8 we find a still more im-
portant statement : c He, the Pram, the Spirit, is the
keeper of the world, he is the king of the world, he is
the lord of the universe, he is my self, thus let it
be known. 5 In our own language this would mean :
The Divine Spirit rules the world, and in Him we
live and move and have our being.

As to Purusha, though it generally means man,
yet, when applied to the highest Deity, we can only
translate it by Person, freed from all that is purely
human, although occasionally endowed with attri-
butes which belong properly to human beings only.
There is this constant conflict going on in the minds
of the Brahmans which is going on in our own minds
also. They want to exclude all that is limited and
conditional, all that is human and personal, from their
concept of deity, and yet their language will not
submit, and the masculine god constantly prevails
over the neuter.

Purusha, we are told in a famous hymn of the
Rig-veda, X. 90, has a thousand heads, a thousand
eyes, and a thousand feet. This is clearly metaphori-
cal and mythological. But immediately afterwards
the poet says : ‘ Purusha is all this, what has been and
what will be. 5

Then follows a curious passage, in which the crea-
tion of the world is represented as a sacrifice of this
Purusha, in which from his mind arose the moon,
from his eye the sun, from his mouth Indra. Again,

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

247

from his breath Vayu, the wind. In the same hymn
occurs the earliest reference to the four castes, when
we are told that the Brahma )ia was his mouth, his
arms became the R%anya, the warrior caste, his legs
the Vaisya, while the $udra was produced from his feet.

Other Names of the Supreme Being 1 , Skamhha.

There are many more names of a similar kind.
Skambha, literally the support, becomes a name of
the Supreme Being. Thus we read in the Atharva-
veda: ‘Skambha is all that is animated, whatever
breathes and whatever shuts the eyes/

In the Rig-veda Skambha is mentioned as the
support of the sky. In the Atharva-veda X. 7, 7,
Skambha is celebrated as supreme. Pra(/apati, it is
said, rested on Skambha, when he made the worlds
firm. The thirty-three gods are supposed to form the
limbs of his body (27), the whole world rests on him,
he has established heaven and earth, and he pervades
the universe (35). Darkness is separated from him,
he is removed from all evil (40).

In these and many other different ways the Indian
mind tried to free itself more and more from the
earlier imagery of Physical Religion, and it reached in
Brahman, in Purusha, in Pram, in Skambha the most
abstract phase of thought that can find expression in
any human language.

These words are, in fact, far more abstract, and less
personal than other names which likewise occur in
the Veda, and which we should, perhaps, feel more
readily inclined to tolerate in our own religious
language, such as, for instance, Pra^apati, lord of
creatures, Visvakarman, the maker of all things,

248

LECTUBE VIII.

Svayambhu, the self-existing, names which satisfied
the Vedic thinkers for a time, but for a time only, till
they were all replaced by Brahman, as a neuter, as
that which is the cause of all things, the Infinite and
Divine, in its widest and highest sense.

Manxes for the Soul.

But while this process of divesting the Divine of
all its imperfect attributes was going on, there was
another even more important process which we can
likewise watch in the language of the Veda, and
which has for its object the Soul, or the Infinite in
mam

After asking what constituted the true essence of
Divinity, the early thinkers began to ask themselves
what constituted the true essence of Humanity.

Aham, Ego.

Language at first supplied the name of Ego , the
Sanskrit ah am. This was probably in its origin no
more than a demonstrative pronoun, meaning like the
Greek ode, this man there, without committing the
speaker to anything more. Man said I am /, as he
had made the Godhead say, I am J. But it was
soon perceived that what was meant by this J, in-
cluded many mere accidents, was in fact the result of
external circumstances, was dependent on the body,
on life, on age, on sex, on experience, on character,
and knowledge, and signified not a simple, but a most
composite being.

Atman.

Sometimes what constituted man, was called by the
same name as the Deity, pr&wa, spirit, or asu, vital

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

249

breath, also griva, the living soul, and manas, the
mind. Still all these names expressed different sides of
the Ego onl} r 3 and none of them satisfied the Indian
thinkers for any length of time. They were search-
ing for something behind all this, and they tried to
grasp it by a new name, by the name of Atman.
This Atman is again very difficult to explain etymo-
logically. It is supposed" to have meant originally
breath, then soul, then self, as a substantive, till like
ipse or avros it became the recognised reflexive
pronoun. Many scholars identify this atmdn with
the A. S. ?edm, the O.H.G. adum, Athem or Odem in
modern German, but both the radical and the deriva-
tive portions of the word are by no means satisfac-
torily made out.

When &tman is used as the name of the true
essence of man, it is difficult to say whether it was
taken over in its meaning of breath, or whether it had
already become the pronoun self, and was taken over
in that sense, to take the place of Ah am, Ego , I. It
is generally translated by soul, and in many places
this is no doubt the right translation. Only soul
itself has so many meanings on account of its many
attributes, and several of them are so inapplicable
to Atman, that I prefer to translate &tman by Self,
that is the true essence of man, free, as yet, from all
attributes.

Atman represents in fact on the side of subjective
humanity what Brahman represents on the side of
objective Divinity; it was the most abstract name for
what I call the infinite or the divine in man.

Of course there have been philosophers in ancient
times, and there are philosophers even now who deny

250

LECTURE VIII.

that there is something divine in man, as they deny
that there is something divine in nature. By divine in
man I mean as yet no more than the non-phenomenal
agent on whom the phenomenal attributes of feeling,
thinking, and willing depend. To the Hindu philo-
sophers this agent was self-evident (svayam-prakasa),
and this may still be called the common-sense view
of the matter. But even the most critical philosophers
who deny the reality of anything that does not come
into immediate contact with the senses, will have to
admit that the phenomena of feeling, thinking, and
willing are conditioned on something, and that that
something must be as real at least as the phenomena
which are conditioned by it.

This Self, however, was not discovered in a day.
We see in the Upanishads many attempts to discover
and grasp it. I shall give you at least one extract, a
kind of allegory representing the search after the
true Self in man. It is a valuable fragment of the
most primitive psychology, and as such deserves to
be quoted in full.

Dialogue from tlie JOandog-ya-tlpanisliad.

It is a dialogue in the /f/mndogya-Upanishad, VIII.
7, that is supposed to have taken place between
Prag&pati, the lord of creation, and Indra, as repre-
senting the Devas, the bright gods, and Viro&ana,
representing the Asuras, who are here mentioned in
their later character already, namely, as the opponents
of the Devas.

Pragrapati is said to have uttered the following
sentence : * The Self (Atman) free from sin, free from
age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst,

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

251

which desires nothing but what it ought to de-
sire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to
imagine, that is what we must search out, that is
what we must try to understand. He who has
searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all
worlds and desires 5 — that is, final beatitude.

The Devas (the gods) and the Asuras (the demons)
both heard these words, and said: c Well, let us search
for that Self by which, if one has searched it out, all
worlds and all desires are obtained.’

Thus saying, Indra went from the Devas, Viro&ana
from the Asuras, and both, without having communi-
cated with each other, approached Pra^apati, holding
fuel in their hands, as is the custom with pupils
approaching their master.

They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years.
(This reflects the early life in India, when pupils had
to serve their masters for many years, almost as
menial servants, in order to induce them to com-
municate their knowledge.)

After Indra and Viro&ana had dwelt with Prar/a-
pati for thirty-two years, Pragapati at last turned to
them to ask :

‘For what purpose have you both been dwelling
here V

They replied that they had heard the saying of
Prac/apati, and that thej 7- had both dwelt near him,
because they wished to know the Self.

Pra^apati, however, like many of the ancient sages,
does not show himself inclined to part with his know-
ledge at once. He gives them several answers which,
though not exactly wrong, are equivocal and open to
a wrong interpretation.

252

LECTUEE VIII.

He says first of all: £ The person (purusha) that is seen
in the eye, that is the Self. This is what I have said.
This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman/

If his pupils had understood this as meant for the
person that sees through the eye, or out of the eye,
they would have received a right though indirect idea
of the Self. But when they thought that the reflec-
tion of man in the eye of another person was meant,
they were wrong. And they evidently took it in the
latter sense, for they asked : c Sir, he who is perceived
in the water, and he who is perceived in a mirror, who
is he ? 5

He replied: 4 He, the Self himself indeed is seen in
all these.’

‘ Look at yourself in a pan of water, and whatever
you do not understand of yourself, come and tell me.’

They looked in the water-pan. Then Pra^apati said
to them :

4 What do you see? 5

They said : 4 W r e both see the Self thus altogether, a
picture even to the very hairs and nails/

Prag4pati said to them : 4 After you have adorned
yourselves, have put on your best clothes and cleansed
yourselves, look again into the water-pan/

They, after having adorned themselves, having put
on their best clothes and cleansed themselves, looked
into the water-pan.

Pragapati said: 4 What do you see?’

They said: 4 Just as we are, well adorned, with our
best clothes and clean, thus we are both there, Sir,
well adorned, with our best clothes and clean.’

Prag&pati said : £ That is the Self, this is the im-
mortal, the fearless, this is Brahman/

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

253

They both went away, satisfied in their hearts.

And Prac/apati, looking after them, said: c They
both go away without having perceived and without
having known the Self, and whoever of these two,
whether Devas or Asuras, will follow this doctrine
(upanishad) will perish.’

Now Viro/cana, satisfied in his heart, went to the
Asuras and preached that doctrine to them, that the
Self alone is to be worshipped, that the Self alone is
to be served, and that he who worships the Self and
serves the Self, gains both worlds, this and the next.

Therefore they call even now a man who does not
give alms here, who has no faith, and offers no sacri-
fices, an Asura, for this is the doctrine of the Asuras.
They deck out the body of the dead with perfumes,
flowers, and fine raiment, by way of ornament, and
think they will thus conquer the world.

But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas, saw
this difficulty. As this Self (the shadow in the water)
is well adorned, when the body is well adorned, well
dressed when the body is well dressed, well cleaned
when the body is well cleaned, that Self will also be
blind if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame,
crippled if the body is crippled, and perish in fact as
soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good
in this doctrine.

TakingTuel in his hand he came again as a pupil to
Prapapati. Pra^apati said to him : c Maghavat, as
you went away with Viro/cana, satisfied in your heart,
for what purpose did you come back ?’

He said : * Sir, as this Self is well adorned when
the body is well adorned, well dressed when the body
is well dressed, well cleaned when the body is well

254

LECTURE VIII.

cleaned, that Self will also be blind if the body is
blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body
is crippled, and perish in fact as soon as the body
perishes. Therefore I see no good in this doctrine/

‘ So it is indeed, Maghavat/ replied Prapapati, ‘ but
I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you.
Live with me another thirty-two years/ He lived
with him another thirty-two years, and then Pra g&-
pati said:

‘He who moves about happy in dreams, he is the
Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brah-
man/

Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But
before he had returned to the Devas, he saw this
difficulty. ‘Although it is true that that Self is not
blind, even if the body is blind, nor lame if the body
is lame, though it is true that that Self is not rendered
faulty by the faults of it (the body), nor struck when
it (the body) is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed,
yet it is as i/they struck him (the Self) in dreams,
as if they chased him. He becomes even con-
scious, as it were, of pain and sheds tears (in his
dreams). Therefore I see no good in this/

Taking fuel in his hands, he went again as a pupil
to PracyapatL Pra^apati said to him : ! Maghavat, as
you went away satisfied in your heart, for what pur-
pose did you come back ? 5

He said: ‘Sir, although it is true that that Self
is not blind even if the body is blind, nor lame if the
body is lame, though it is true that that Self is not
rendered faulty by the faults of the body, nor struck
when it (the body) is struck, nor lamed when it is
lamed, yet it is as if they struck him (the Self) in

TEUE IMMORTALITY.

255

dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes even
conscious, as it were, of pain and sheds tears. There-
fore I see no good in this.’

‘ So it is indeed, Maghavat , 5 replied Pra^apati, £ but
I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you.
Live with me another thirty-two years . 5 He lived
with him another thirty-two years. Then Pra^apati
said: ‘When a man, being asleep, reposing, and at
perfect rest, sees no dreams, that is the Self, this is
the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman . 5

Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But
before he had returned to the Devas he saw this diffi-
culty. e In truth he thus does not know himself (his
Self) that he is I, nor does he know anything that
exists. He is gone to utter annihilation. I see no
good in this . 5

Taking fuel in his hand, he went once more as a
pupil to Pra<7apati. Pra</apati said to him : £ Magha-
vat, as you went away satisfied in your heart, for
what purpose did you come back?’

He said: ‘Sir, in that way he does not know him-
self that he is I, nor does he know anything that
exists. He is gone to utter annihilation. I see no
good in this . 5

5 So it is indeed, Maghavat , 5 replied Pra^apati, ‘ but
I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you, and
nothing more than this. Live here other five years . 5

He lived there other five years. This made in all
one hundred and one years, and therefore it is said
that Indra Maghavat lived one hundred and one years
as a pupil with Pra^apati.

Pragr&pati said to him : ‘ Maghavat, this body is
mortal and always held by death. It is the abode of

256

LECTURE VIII.

that Self which is immortal and without body. When
in the body (by thinking this body is I and I am this
body), the Self is held by pleasure and pain. So long
as he is in the body, he cannot get free from pleasure
and pain. But when he is free of the body (when he
knows himself different from the body) then neither
pleasure nor pain touches him. The wind is without
body, the cloud, lightning, and thunder are without
body (without hands, feet, &c.). Now as these,
atising from this heavenly ether (space), appear in
their own form, as soon as they have approached the
highest light, thus does that serene being, arising
from this body, appear in its own form, as soon as it
has approached the highest light (the knowledge of
Self). He (in that state) is the highest person (uttama
purusha). He moves about there laughing (or eat-
ing), playing, and rejoicing (in his mind), be it with
women, carriages, or relatives, never minding that
body into which he was born.

‘Like a horse attached to a cart, so is the spirit
(pram, pra^omtman) attached to this body.

' Now where the sight has entered into the void (the
open space, the black pupil of the eye) there is the
person of the eye, the eye itself is but the instrument
of seeing. He who knows, let me smell this, he is the
Self, the nose is but the instrument of smelling. He
who knows, let me say this, he is the Self, the tongue
is but the instrument of sajdng. He who knows, let
me hear this, he is the Self, the ear is but the instru-
ment of hearing.

4 He who knows, let me think this, he is the Self,
the mind is but the divine eye. He, the Self, seoing
these pleasures (which to others are hidden like a

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

25 7

buried treasure of gold) through his divine eye, i. e.
through the mind, — rejoices.

£ The Devas who are in the world of Brahman medi-
tate on that Self (as taught by Pra^apati to Indra,
and by Indra to the Devas). Therefore all worlds be-
long to them, and all desires. He who knows that Self
and understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires. 5
Thus said Pra</apati, yea, thus said Pra^apati.

This is a kind of psychological legend which in
spite of certain expressions that strike us as strange,
perhaps as unintelligible, it would be difficult to
match in any ancient literature. Are there many
people even now, after more than two thousand years
have elapsed, that trouble themselves about these
questions 1 If a man goes so far as to speak about
his Ego, he begins to consider himself something of a
philosopher. But it enters into the mind of very few
thinkers, and even of philosophers by profession, to
ask what this Ego is, what it can be and what it can-
not be, what lies behind it, what is its real substance.
Language supplies them with the name of soul ready
made. ‘I have a soul/ they say, but who or what
it is that has a soul, and whence that soul origin-
ates, does not trouble them much. They may speak
of I and of I myself \ but who and what that self
is which they call my self, and who the my is to
whom that self belongs, is but seldom asked. No
Hindu philosopher would say, I have an Atman or
a soul. And here we find these ancient thinkers in
India, clearly perceiving the question that has to be
asked, and answering it too better than it has ever
been answered. It may be said we all know that our
garments have nothing to do with our self, and that
(4) S

258

LECTUBE YIIL

not philosophers only, but people at large, have learnt
even in the nursery that their body is but a garment
and has nothing to do with their soul. But there are
garments and garments. A man may say that he is
the same when he is eighty years old and when he
was eight weeks old, that his body has changed, but
not his self. Sex too is but one of many garments
which we wear in this life. Now a Yedantist might
ask, if a man were born again as a woman, would his
self be still the same, would he be the self-same
person ? Other such garments are language, nation-
ality, religion. A Ved&ntist might ask, supposing
that a man in the next life were denuded of all these
coverings, would he still be the self-same person?
We may imagine that we have an answer ready for
all these questions, or that they deserve no answer at
all from wise people such as we are, and yet when we
ask ourselves the simple question how we hope to
meet the souls of those who have been dear to us in
this life, we shall find that our ideas of a soul have to
be divested of many garments, have to be purified
quite as much as the ideas of the questioners in the
ancient Upanishad. Old as these questioners are,
distant as they are from us, strange as their language
may sound to us, they may still become to us at least
Friends in Council.

That the legend which I translated for you from
the Upanishads is an old legend, or that something
like it existed before the chapter in our Upanishad
was composed, we may conclude from the passage
where it said: * Therefore it is said/ or more literally,
that is what they say, i Maghavat lived one hundred
and one years as a pupil of Prag&pati/ On the other

TBUE IMMORTALITY.

259

hand, the legend cannot be ascribed to the earliest
Vedic literature, for in the hymns Indra is a supreme
god who would scorn the idea of becoming the pupil
of Prapapati. This Pragapati, L e. the lord of crea-
tures, or of all created things, is himself, as we saw,
a later deity, a personification of the creative force, a
name of the supreme, yet of a personal and more or
less mythological deity.

But whatever the origin of this legend may have
been, we have it here in one of the old and
recognised Upanishads, and can hardly place it
later than the time of Plato and his pupils. I call
it a psychological legend, because it seems to have
preserved to us some of the earliest attempts of
Indian thought to conceive and to name what we
without much reflection call by the inherited name of
soul . You may remember that certain anthropolo-
gists hold the opinion that the first conception of soul
had everywhere, and more particularly among savage
races, been that of a shadow, nay that some savages
believed even now that the shadow was the soul of a
living man, and that therefore a corpse threw no
shadow. I wonder that anthropologists have never
quoted our Dialogue in support of their opinion ; only
that in this case it is held not by uncivilised, but by
a highly civilised race, and is held by it, only in order
to be refuted.

The next opinion also that the soul is that which in
sleep, and as it were, without the body, sees visions in
dreams, might be quoted in support of another opinion,
often put forward by anthropologists, that the first
idea of a soul, as without the body, arose from dreams,
and that even now certain savage races believe that

260

LECTURE VIII.

in a dream the soul leaves the body and travels about
by itself. This may be so in isolated cases ; we saw,
however, that the real origin of the name and concept
of soul was far more rational, that people took breath,
the tangible sign of the agent within, as the name of
the soul, divesting it in time of all that was incom-
patible with an invisible agent. But however that
may be, anthropologists may possibly begin to see
that the Veda also contains remnants of ancient thought,
though it likewise supplies a warning against too rapid
generalisation and against seeing in the Veda a com-
plete picture of savage, or what they call primitive,
man.

Deductions from the Dialogue.

But now let us see what the later Ved&nta philosophy
makes out of this legend. The legend itself, as we
find it in the Upanishad, shows already that there
was a higher purpose in it than simply to show that
the soul was not a mere appearance, not the picture
reflected in the eye, not the shadow in the water, not
the person dreaming a dream, or losing all conscious-
ness in dreamless sleep. One of Prag&pati’s pupils,
Viro/cana, is no doubt satisfied with the idea that the
body as seen reflected in the eye or in the water is the
self, is what a man really is. But Indra is not. He
is not satisfied even with the soul being the person in
a dream, for, he says, that even in a dream a man
becomes conscious of pain, and actually sheds tears,
and that therefore, if the soul were a dream, it would
not be perfect, it would not be free from suffering. Nay,
if it is said that the soul is the person in a deep and
dreamless sleep, even that would not satisfy Indra, for,
in that case, as he says, all consciousness would be

TBUE IMMOKTALITY.

261

gone, he would not know, as he expresses it, that he,
the self, is I, or that there is a myself.

Prap&pati then gives him the highest instruction
which he can communicate, by saying that the soul
can become free by knowledge only, that it exists by
knowledge only, by knowing itself as free from the
body and all other limitations. It then can rise from
the body, a serene being in its own form, and approach
the highest light, the highest knowledge, the know-
ledge that its own Self is the Highest, is in fact the
Divine Self.

So far all would be intelligible. It would not
require death to free the soul from the body, know-
ledge would effect that liberation far better, and leave
the soul even in this life a mere spectator of its bodily
abode, of its bodily joys and its bodily sufferings, a
silent spectator even of the decay and death of the
body.

But the Ved&nta philosopher is not so easil} r satis-
fied ; and I think it will be interesting and give you
a better idea of the philosophical acumen of the
Vedantist, if I read you $ankara’s treatment of our
psychological legend. This is, of course, a much later
phase of thought, at least as late as the seventh century
a.d. Yet what is recent and modern in India, is not
so recent and modern with us.

Sankara’s Remarks.

Sankara, the commentator on the Vedanta-sutra, is
much exercised when he has to discuss this Dialogue
between Prapapati, Indra, and Vixo&ana on the true
nature of the self, or man’s soul. There is an ap-
parent want of truthfulness on the part of Prapapati,

262

LECTURE VIII*

he thinks, in conveying to his pupils a false impres-
sion of the real nature of the Atman or the human
soul, and its relation to Brahman, the Highest Deity.
It is quite true that his words admit of two meanings,
a wrong one and a right one ; still Pragdpati knows
that one at least of his pupils, Viro/cana, when he
returns to the Asuras has not understood them in
their true sense ; and yet he lets him depart.

Next comes a more important difficulty. Pra$a-
pati had promised to teach what the true Atman is,
the immortal, the fearless, the Self which is free from
sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from
hunger and thirst ; but his answers seem to apply to
the individual Self only. Thus when he says at first
that the person as seen in the eye is the Self (ya esho
’kshmi drayate), it is quite clear that Viro/cana takes
this for the small image or the reflection which a man
sees of himself in the pupil of his friend’s eye. And
he therefore asks whether the Self that is perceived
as reflected in the eye, is the same as that which is
perceived as reflected in the water or in a mirror.
Pra^apati assents, though evidently with a mental
reservation. He had not meant from the first the
small figure reflected in the eye, hut the seer within
the eye, looking out from the eye, the seer, as the sub-
ject of all seeing, who sees, and may be said to be
seen in the eye. Still, as in an indirect way even the
reflection^ in the eye may be called the reflection of
the true Atman, he invites Viro&ana to test his asser-
tion by a kind of experiment, an experiment that
ought to have opened his eyes, but did not. He asks
both his pupils to look at their images in the water
or in a mirror, first as they are, and again after they

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

263

have adorned themselves. He thought they would
have perceived that these outward adornments could
not possibly constitute their own self, as little as the
body, but the experiment is lost on them. While
Prac/apati means that in whatever reflection they see
themselves, they see, though hidden, their true Self,
they imagine that what they see, namely the body,
reflected in the water, even the body with its adorn-
ments, is their true Self. Pra^apati is sorry for them,
and that he was not entirely responsible for their
mistake, is shown soon after by the doubts that arise
in the mind of at least one of his pupils. For while
Viro/cana returns to the Asuras to teach them that
the body, such as it is seen reflected in the water,
even with its adornments, is the Self, Indra hesi-
tates, and returns to Pragapati. He asks how the
body reflected in the water can be the Self, proclaimed
by Pragapati, and of which he had said that it was
perfect and free from all defects, seeing that if the
body is crippled its image in the water also is crip-
pled, so that if that were the Self, the Self would net
be what it must be, perfect and immortal, but would
perish, whenever the body perishes.

Exactly the same happens again in the second
lesson. No doubt, the person in a dream is free
from certain defects of the body— a blind person if
in a dream sees, a deaf person hears. But even thus,
he also seems liable to suffering, for he actually may
cry in a dream. Therefore even the dreaming soul
cannot be the true Self perfect and free from all
suffering.

When in his third lesson Pragapati calls the soul
in the deepest sleep the Self, because it then suffers

264

LECTURE VIII.

no longer from anything, Indra replies that in that
case the soul knows nothing at all, and is gone to
destruction (vinasam eva upeti).

It is only at this last moment that Pra^&pati, like
other sages of antiquity, reveals his full knowledge to
his pupil. The true Self, he says, has nothing to do
with the body. For the body is mortal, but the Self
is not mortal. The Self dwells in the body, and as
long as he thinks that the body is I and I am this
body, the Self is enthralled by pleasure and pain, it is
not the perfect, it is not the immortal Self. But as
soon as the Self knows that he is independent of the
body and becomes free from it, not by death, but by
knowledge, then he suffers no longer; neither pain
nor pleasure can touch him. When he has approached
this highest light of knowledge, then there is perfect
serenity. He knows himself to be the highest Self,
and therefore is the highest Self, and though while life
lasts, he moves about among the pleasant sights of the
world, he does not mind them, they concern his body
only or his bodily self, his Ego, and he has learnt that all
this is not himself, not his Self, not his absolute Self.

But there remains a far greater difficulty which the
commentators have to solve, and which they do solve
each in his own way. To us the story of Prac/apati
is simply an old legend, originally intended, it would
seem, to teach no more than that there was a soul in
man, and that that soul was independent of the body.
That would have been quite enough wisdom for early
days, particularly if we are right in supposing that
the belief in the soul as a shadow or a dream was a
popular belief current at the time, and that it really
required refutation. But when at a later time this

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

265

legend had to be used for higher purposes, when what
had to be taught about the soul was not only that it
was not the body, nor its appearance, nor its shadow,
nor the vision of a dream, but that it was something
higher, that it could ascend to the world of Brahman
and enjoy perfect happiness before his throne, nay,
when it was discovered at a still later time, that the
soul could go beyond the throne of Brahman and
share once more the very essence of Brahman, then
new difficulties arose. These difficulties were carefully
considered by Sankara and other Vedantist philo-
sophers, and they still form a subject on which
different sections of the Vedantist school of philosophy
hold divergent views..

The principal difficulty was to determine what was
the true relation of the individual soul to Brahman,
whether there was any essential difference between
the two, and whether when it was said that the soul
was perfect, fearless, and immortal, this could apply
to the individual soul. This view that the individual
soul is meant, is upheld in the Ved&nta philosophy by
what is called the Purvapakshin, a most excellent
institution in Indian philosophy. This Purvapakshin
is an imaginary person who is privileged in every dis-
puted question to say all that can possibly be said
against the view finally to be upheld. He is allowed
every possible freedom in objecting, as long as he is
not entirely absurd ; he is something like the man of
straw whom modern writers like to set up in their
^arguments in order to be able to demolish him with
great credit to themselves. From the Hindu point of
view, however, these objections are like piles, to be
driven in by every blow that is aimed at them, and

266

LECTURE VIII.

meant in the end to support the true conclusion that
is to be built up upon them. Frequently the objections
contained in the purvapaksha are bon& fide objections,
and may have been held by different authorities,
though in the end they have all to be demolished,
their demolition thus serving the useful purpose of
guarding the doctrine that has to be established
against every imaginable objection.

In our case the objector says that it is the indi-
vidual that must be meant as the object of Pra^apati’s
teaching. The seer in the eye, he says, or the person
that is seen in the eye, is referred to again and again
as the same entity in the clauses which follow, when
it is said, c I shall explain him still further to you/ and
in the explanations which follow, it is the individual
soul in its different states (in dreams or in deep sleep)
which is referred to, so that the clauses attached to
both these explanations, viz. that is the perfect, the
immortal, the faultless, that is Brahman, can refer to
the individual soul only, which is said to be free from
sin and the like. After that, when Pragr&pati has dis-
covered a flaw in the condition of the soul in deep
sleep also, he enters on a further explanation. He
blames the souls connexion with the body, and finally
declares that it is the individual soul, but only after
it has risen from out the body. Hence the opponent
argues that the text admits the possibility of the
qualities of the highest Self belonging to the indi-
vidual soul.

Sankara, however, proceeds at once to controvert
this opinion, though we shall see that the original
words of Pra$apati certainly lend themselves to the
opponents interpretation. We do not admit, he says,

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

267

that it is the individual soul in its phenomenal reality
that is the highest self, but only the individual soul,
in so far as its true nature has become manifest
within it (avirbhutasvarupa), that is to say, after, by
means of true knowledge, it has ceased to be an indi-
vidual soul, or after it has recovered its absolute
reality. This equivocality runs through the whole
system of the Vedanta as conceived by Sankara.
Prag&pati could apparently assert a number of things
of the individual self, which properly apply to the
highest Self only, because in its true nature, that is
after having recovered a knowledge of its true nature,
the individual self is really the highest Self, and in
fact never was anything else. jSankara says, this
very expression (‘ whose true nature has become mani-
fest 5 ) qualifies the individual soul with reference to its
previous state. Therefore Prag&pati must be under-
stood to speak at first of the seer, characterised by
the eye, and then to show in the passage treating of
the reflection in the water or the mirror, that he, the
seer, has not his true Self in the body or in the reflec-
tion of the body. Pragdpati then refers to this seer
again as the subject to be explained, saying, £ I shall
explain him further , 5 and having then spoken of him
as subject to the states of dreaming and of sleeping a
deep sleep, he finally explains the individual soul in
its real nature, that is, in so far as it is the highest
Brahman, not in so far as it appears to be an indi-
vidual soul. The highest light mentioned in the
passage last quoted, as what is to be approached, is
nothing else but the highest Brahman which is distin-
guished by such attributes as perfection, freedom from
sin, freedom from old age, from death, and all im-

268

LECTURE Till.

perfections and desires. All these are qualities which
cannot he ascribed to the individual soul or to the
Ego in the body. They belong to the Highest Being
only. It is this Highest Being, this Brahman alone,
that constitutes the essence of the individual soul,
while its phenomenal aspect which depends on ficti-
tious limitations and conditions (upadhis) or on
Nescience cannot be its real nature. For as long as
the individual soul does not free itself from Nescience,
or a belief in duality, it takes something else for itself.

True knowledge of the Self, or true self-knowledge,
expresses itself in the words, ‘ Thou art That,’ or
! I am Brahman,’ the nature of Brahman being un-
changeable, eternal cognition. Until that stage has
been reached, the individual soul remains the indi-
vidual soul, fettered by the body, by the organs
of sense, nay, even by the mind and its various
functions. It is by means of Sruti or revelation
alone, and by the knowledge derived from it, that the
soul perceives that it is not the body, that it is not
the senses, that it is not the mind, that it forms no
part of the transmigratory process, but that it is and
always has been, the True, the Beal, to ov, the Self
whose nature is pure intelligence. When once lifted
above the vain conceit of being one with the body,
with the organs of sense, and with the mind, it
becomes or it knows itself to be and always to have
been the Self, the Self whose nature is unchanging,
eternal intelligence. This is declared in such pas-
sages as, ‘He who knows the highest Brahman,
becomes even Brahman. And this is the real nature
of the individual soul, by means of which it arises
from the body and appears in its own form . 5

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269

The True Nature of the Individual Soul.

Here a new objection is raised? How, it is asked,
can we speak of the manifestation of the true nature
(svarupa) of that which is unchanging and eternal?
How, in fact, can we speak of it as being hidden for
a time, and then only reappearing in its own form
or in its true nature ? Of gold and similar substances,
the true nature of which becomes hidden, while its
specific qualities are rendered non-apparent by their
contact with some other substance, it may indeed
be said that their true nature was hidden, and is
rendered manifest when they are cleaned by the
application of some acid substance. So it may be
said likewise, that the stars, whose light during
daytime is overpowered by the superior brilliancy
of the sun, become manifest in their true nature
at night when the overpowering sun has departed.
But it is impossible to speak of an analogous over-
powering of the eternal light of intelligence by any
agency whatsoever, since it is free from all contact.
How then did this momentous change take place ?

The Phenomenal and the Beal.

In our own philosophical language we might
express the same question by asking, How did the
real become phenomenal, and how can the pheno-
menal become real again? or, in other words, How
was the infinite changed into the finite, how was the
eternal changed into the temporal, and how can the
temporal regain its eternal nature ? or, to put it into
more familiar language, How was this world created,
and how can it be uncreated again ?

270

LECTIJKE Till.

We must remember that, like the Eleatic philo-
sophers, the ancient Vedantists also started with that
unchangeable conviction that God, or the Supreme
Being, or Brahman, as it is called in India, is one and
all, and that there can be nothing besides. This is
the most absolute Monism. If it is called Pantheism,
there is nothing to object, and we shall find the same
Pantheism in some of the most perfect religions of the
world, in all which hold that God is or will be All in
All, and that if there really existed anything besides,
He would no longer be infinite, omnipresent, and
omnipotent, He would no longer be God in the highest
sense. There is, of course, a great difference between
saying that all things have their true being in and
from God, and saying that all things, as we see them,
are God. Or, to put it in another way, as soon as
we say that there is a phenomenal world, we imply
by necessity that there is also a non-phenomenal,
a noumenal, or an absolutely real world, just as when
we say darkness, we imply light. Whoever speaks of
anything relative, conditioned, or contingent, admits at
the same time something non-relative, non-conditioned,
non-contingent, something which we call real, absolute,
eternal, divine, or any other name. It is easy enough
for the human understanding to create a noumenal or
non-phenomenal world ; it is, in fact, no more than
applying to our experience the law of causality, and
saying that there must be a cause for everything, and
that that cause or that Creator is the One Absolute
Being. But when we have done that, then comes the
real problem, namely, how was the cause ever changed
into an effect, how did the absolute become relative,
bow did the noumenal become phenomenal ? or, to put

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271

it into more theological language, how was this world
created ? It took a long time before the human mind
could bring itself to confess ' its utter impotence and
ignorance on this point, its agnosticism, its Docta
ignorantia , as Cardinal Cusanus called it. And it
seems to me extremely interesting to watch the
various efforts of the human mind in every part of
the world to solve this greatest and oldest riddle,
before it was finally given up.

The Indian Vedantist treats this question chiefly
from the subjective point of view. He does not ask
at once how the world was created, but first of all,
how the individual soul came to be what it is, and
how its belief in an objective created world arose.
Before there arises the knowledge of separateness, he
says, or aloofness of the soul from the body, the
nature of the individual soul, which consists in the
light of sight and all the rest, is as it were not
separate from the so-called Upadhis, or limiting
conditions such as body, senses, mind, sense-objects,
and perception. Similarly as in a pure rock-crystal
when placed near a red rose, its true nature, which
consists in transparency and perfect whiteness, is,
before its separateness has been grasped, as it were
non-separate from its limiting conditions (the Upa-
dhis), that is, the red rose, while, when its separate-
ness has once been grasped, according to legitimate
authority, the rock-crystal reassumes at once its true
nature, transparency and whiteness, though, in reality,
it always was transparent and white, — in the same
manner there arises in the individual soul which is not
separate as yet from the limiting conditions (Upadhi)
of the body and all the rest, knowledge of separate-

272

LECTURE VIII.

ness and aloofness, produced by Sfuti ; there follows
the resurrection of the Atman from the body, the
realisation of its true nature, by means of true
knowledge, and the comprehension of the one and
only Atman. Thus the embodied and non-embodied
states of the Self are due entirely to discrimination
and non-discrimination, as it is said (Kat/m-Up.
I. 2, 22): ‘Bodyless within the bodies. 9 This non-
difference between the embodied and non-embodied
state is recorded in the Smriti also (Bhag. Gita,
XIII. 31) when it is said : ‘ 0 Friend, though dwelling
in the body, it (the Atman, the Self or the soul) does
not act and is not tainted.’

The Atman nnchang'ed amidst the changes of the World.

You see now that what Sankara wishes to bring
out, and what he thinks is implied in the language of
the Upanishads, is that the Atman is always the
same, and that the apparent difference between the
individual soul and the Supreme Soul is simply the
result of wrong knowledge, of Nescience, but is not
due to any reality. He is very anxious to show that
Pragdpati also in the teaching which he imparted to
Indra and ViroAana could not have meant anything
else. Prar/apati, he says, after having referred to the
individual or living soul (the jiva), seen, or rather
seeing, in the eye, &c., continues, ‘This is (if you only
knew it) the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman/
He argues that if the seer in the eye, the individual seer,
were in reality different from Brahman, the immortal
and fearless, it would not be co-ordinated (as it is by
Prac$pati) with the immortal, the fearless Brahman.

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

273

The reflected Self, on the other hand, is not spoken of
as he who is characterised by the eye (the seer within
the eye), for that would indeed render Pragdpati
obnoxious to the reproach of saying deceitful things.

Sankara, however, is honest enough to tell us that
his explanation is not the only one that has been
proposed. Others, he tells us, think that Pragfapati
speaks throughout of the free and faultless Self
(Atman), not of the individual soul at all. But he
points out that the pronouns used in the text point
clearly to two subjects, the individual soul on the one
hand, and the highest soul on the other ; and all that
we have to learn is that the individual soul is not
wdiat it seems to be ; just as, for our own peace of
mind, we have to find out that what seemed to us
a serpent, and then frightened us, is not a serpent,
but a rope, and need not frighten us any more.

nescience or Avidya the Cause of Phenomenal Semblance.

There are others again, he continues, some of our
own friends (possibly the followers of Eamanu^a),
who hold that the individual soul, as such, is abso-
lutely real ; but to this he objects, remarking that the
whole of the Vedanta-sutras are intended to show
that the one Supreme Being only is the highest and
eternal intelligent reality, and that it is only the
result of Nescience if we imagine that the many
individual souls may claim any independent reality.
It comes to this, that according to /Sankara, the
highest Self may for a time be called different from the
individual soul, but the individual soul is never sub-
stantially anything but the highest Self, except through
its own temporary Nescience. This slight concession

re t

274

LECTUBE Till.

of a temporary reality of the individual soul seemed
necessary to $ankara, who, after all, is not only
a philosopher, but a theologian also, because the
Yeda, which in his eyes is infallible, gives all its
sacrificial and moral precepts for individual souls,
whose existence is thereby taken for established,
though no doubt such precepts are chiefly meant for
persons who do not yet possess the full knowledge of
the Self.

There are many more points connected with the
relation of the individual to the Highest Self, which
Sankara argues out most minutely, but we need not
here dwell on them any longer, as we shall have to
return to that subject when treating of the systematic
philosophy of $ankara. What distinguishes Ankara’s
view on the union of the individual soul with the
Supreme Soul, is the complete Ilenosis or oneness which
according to him always exists, but in the individual
soul may for a time be darkened by Nescience. There
are other modes of union also which he fully dis-
cusses, but which in the end he rejects. Thus referring
to the teaching of Asmarathya (I. 4, 20), Sankara
argues, c If the individual soul were different from the
Highest Self, the knowledge of the Highest Soul would
not imply the knowledge of the individual soul, and
thus the promise given in one of the Upanishads, that
through the knowledge of the one thing (the Highest
Soul) everything is to be known, would not be
fulfilled. 5 He does not admit that the individual soul
can be called in any sense the creation of the Highest
Soul, though the reason which he gives is again
theological rather than philosophical. He says that
when the Veda relates the creation of fire and the

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

2/5

other elements, it does never at the same time relate
any separate creation of the individual soul. A
Vedantist, therefore, has, as Sankara argues, no right
to look on the soul as a created thing, as a product of
the Highest Self, different from the latter. You see
how this question can be argued ad infinitum , and
it was argued ad infinitum by various schools of
Vedanta philosophers.

SatyaTblie&ava&a and BliedabRedavada.

Two names were given to these different views,
one the Satyabhedav&da, the teaching of real
separation or difference between the individual and
the Highest Self, the other the Bhed&bhedavada,
the teaching of both separation and of non-separation.
They both admit that the individual soul and the
universal soul are essentially one. The difference
between them turns on the question whether the
individual soul, before it arrives at the knowledge
of its true nature, may be called independent, some-
thing by itself, or not. A very popular simile used is
that of fire and sparks. As the sparks, it is said 1 ,
issuing from a fire are not absolutely different from
the fire, because they participate in the nature of
fire, and, on the other hand, are not absolutely non-
different, because in that case they would not be
distinguishable either from the fire or from each
other, so the individual souls also, if considered as
effects of Brahman, are neither absolutely different
from Brahman, for that would mean that they are
not of the nature of intelligence (i. e. Brahman), nor
absolutely non-different from Brahman, because in

1 See BMmati on Ved. Sutra I. 4, 21 ; Thibajit, part i. p. 277.

276

LECTUBE VIII.

that case they would not be distinguished from each
other, also because, if they were identical with Brah-
man and therefore omniscient, it would be useless to
give people any instruction, such as the XJpanishads
give. You see that Indian philosophers excel in
their similes and illustrations, and this idea of the
souls being scintillations of God will meet us again
and again in other religions also.

In fact, these thoughts of the XJpanishads could not
be expressed more correctly in our own language
than they were by Henry More, the famous Cambridge
theologian, when he says : —

f A spark or ray of the Divinity

Clouded in earthy fogs, yclad in clay,

A precious drop, sunk from Eternity,

Spilt on the ground, or rather slunk away;

For then we fell when we 'gan first to assay
By stealth of our own selves something to been,
Uncentring ourselves from our great Stay,

Which fondly we new liberty did ween,

And from that prank right jolly wights ourselves did deem/

Those who defend the other theory, the Satya-
bhedav&da, argue as follows: The individual soul is
for a time absolutely different from the Highest Self.
But it is spoken of in the XJpanishads as non- different,
because after having purified itself by means of
knowledge and meditation it may pass out of the
body and become once more one with the Highest
Self. The text of the XJpanishads thus transfers
a future state of non-difference to that time when
difference still actually exists. Thus the Pa/7&ar&trikas
say: XJp to the moment of emancipation being reached,
the soul and the Highest Self are different. But the
emancipated or enlightened soul is no longer different

TBUE IMMOBTALITY.

277

from the Highest Self, since there is no further cause
of difference.

Tlie Approach of the Soul to Brahman.

If we keep this idea clearly in view, we may now
return to the first legend which we examined, and
which was taken from the Brzhadara?iyaka-XJpani-
shad. You may remember that there also we saw
philosophical ideas grafted on ancient legends. The
journey of the soul on the Path of the Fathers to the
moon was evidently an old legend. From the moon,
as you may remember, the soul was supposed to
return to a new life, after its merits had been ex
hausted. In fact the Path of the Fathers did not lead
out of what is called Samsara, the course of the world,
the circle of cosmic existence, the succession of births
and deaths. We do not read here, at the end of the
chapter, that £ there is no return/

The next step was the belief in a Devayana, the Path
of the Gods, which really led to eternal blessedness,
without any return to a renewed cosmic existence.
We left the soul standing before the throne of Brah-
man, and enjoying perfect happiness in that divine
presence. Nothing more is said in the old Upanishads.
It is generally admitted, however, that even those who
at first go on the Path of the Fathers, and return from
the moon to enter upon a new cycle of life, may in the
end attain higher knowledge and then proceed further
on the Path of the Gods till they reach the presence of
Brahman. The Upanishad ends with one more para-
graph stating that those who know neither of these
two roads become worms, birds, and creeping things.
This is all which the old Upanishads had to say.

27 8

LECTURE VIII.

But after the psychological speculation had led the
Indian mind to a new conception of the soul as
something no longer limited by the trammels of earthly
individuality, the very idea of an approach of that
soul to the throne on which Brahman sat became
unmeaning.

Brahman was no longer an objective Being that
could be approached as a king is approached by
a subject and thus we find in another Upanishad, the
Kaushitaki, where the same legend is told of the soul
advancing on the road of the gods till it reaches the
thione of Brahman, quite a new idea coming in, the idea
on which the whole of Sankara- ’s Ved&ntism hinges. The
egendary framework is indeed preserved in full detail
but when the soul has once placed one foot on the
throne of Brahman, Brahman, you may remember is
represented as saying, ‘Who art thou?’ Then aiW
some more or less intelligible utterances, comes the
bold and startling answer of the soul: ‘I am what

th +°^ ar i T /° U art the Self> 1 am the Self. Thou
art the True (satyam), I am the True.’

th^TrJ^ ?, ah ff n as1 f once more ’ ‘ What then is
the True, ro or? the soul replies: 'What is different

fiom the gods (you see that Brahman is here no
longer considered as a mere god), and what is different

is7j A Gn T th0 P llenomenal world) that

- Sat, T , or, but the gods and the senses are

This is a mere play on words (of which the n id
philosophers in India as well as in Graeco are verv
ond). Sattyam (for satyam) is a regular derivative!

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

279

meaning truth, but by dividing it into Sat, to &, and
tya, it, the Upanishad wished to show that Brahman
is what we should call both the absolutely and the
relatively Beal, the phenomenal as well as the nou-
•menal universe. And thus the Upanishad concludes:
‘Therefore by that name of Sattya is called all this,
whatever there is. All this thou ait.’

Identity of the Soul with Brahman.

You see in this Upanishad a decided advance
beyond the older Upanishads. Brahman is no longer
a god, not even the Supreme God ; his place is taken
by Brahman, neuter, the essence of all things; and the
soul, knowing that it is no longer separated from that
essence, learns the highest lesson of the whole Vedanta
doctrine, Tat tvam asi, ‘Thou art that/ that is to say,

‘ Thou, who for a time didst seem to be something by
thyself, art that, art really nothing apart from the
divine essence/ To know Brahman is to be Brahman,
or, as we should say, 4 in knowledge of Him standeth
our eternal life/ Therefore even the idea of an
approach of the individual towards the universal soul
has to be surrendered. As soon as the true knowledge
has been gained, the two, as by lightning, are known
to be one, and therefore are one ; an approach of the
one towards the other is no longer conceivable. The
Vedantist, however, does not only assert all this, but
he has ever so many arguments in store to prove with
scholastic and sometimes sophistic ingenuity that the
individual soul could never in reality be anything
separate from the Highest Being, and that the dis-
tinction between a Higher and a Lower Brahman is
temporary only, and dependent on our knowledge

280

LECTURE Till.

or ignorance, that the Highest Being or Brahman
can be one only, and not two, as it might appear
when a distinction is made between the Lower and
Higher Brahman. Almost in the same words as
the Eleatic 1 philosophers and the German Mystics
of the fourteenth century, the V edantist argues
that it would be self-contradictory to admit that
there could be anything besides the Infinite or
Brahman, which is All in All, and that therefore
the soul also cannot be anything different from
it, can never claim a separate and independent
existence.

Secondly, as Brahman has to be conceived as perfect,
and therefore as unchangeable, the soul cannot be
conceived as a real modification or deterioration of
Brahman.

Thirdly, as Brahman has neither beginning nor
end, neither can it have any parts 2 ; therefore the
soul cannot be a part of Brahman, but the whole of
Brahman must be present in every individual soul.
This is the same as the teaching of Plotinus, who held
with equal consistency that the True Being is totally
present in every part of the universe. He is said to
have written a whole book on this subject. Dr. Henry
More calls this theory the Holenmerian , from the
Greek ovcria oXzvnepris, an essence that is all in each
part.

So much on what the Upanishads hint and what
Vedantist philosophers, such as Sankara, try to estab-
lish by logical argument as to the true nature of the
soul and its relation to the Divine and Absolute

1 Zeller, p. 472.

2 Zeller, p. 511, fragm. III.

TRUE IMMORTALITY.

281

Being. From a purely logical point of view, /Sankara’s
position seems to me impregnable, and when so
rigorous a logician as Schopenhauer declares his com-
plete submission to /Sankaras arguments, there is no
fear of their being upset by other logicians.

LECTURE IX.

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

®2ie Vedanta as a Philosophical System.

T HOUGH it is chiefly the relation between the
human soul and God which interests us in the
teaching of the Upanishads and of the Ved&nta-sutras,
yet there are some other topics in that ancient philo-
sophy which deserve our attention and which may
help to throw light on the subject with which we are
more specially concerned. I know it is no easy task
to make Indian philosophy intelligible or attractive
to English students. It is with Indian philosophy as
with Indian music.

We are so accustomed to our own, that at first
Indian music sounds to our ears like mere noise,
without rhythm, without melody, without harmony.
And yet Indian music is thoroughly scientific, and if
we are but patient listeners, it begins to exercise its
own fascination upon us. It will be the same with
Indian philosophy, if only we make an effort to learn
to speak its language and to think its thoughts.

Identity of Soul and Brahman.

Let us remember then that the Yedinta-philosophy
rests on the fundamental conviction of the Ved&ntist,

THE YEDANTA-PHIL0S0PHT.

283

that the soul and the Absolute Being or Brahman, are
one in their essence. We saw in the old Upanishads
how this conviction rose slowly, like the dawn, on the
intellectual horizon of India, but how in the end it
absorbed every thought, whether philosophical or re-
ligious, in its dazzling splendour. When it had once
been recognised that the soul and Brahman were in
their deepest essence one, the old mythological lan-
guage of the Upanishads, representing the soul as
travelling on the road of the Fathers, or on the road
of the gods towards the throne of Brahman was given
up. We read in the Vedanta-philosophy (in the 29th
paragraph of the third chapter of the third book), that
this approach to the throne of Brahman has its proper
meaning so long only as Brahman is still considered
as personal and endowed -with various qualities (sa-
guwa), but that, when the knowledge of the true,
the absolute and unqualified Brahman, the Absolute
Being, has once risen in the mind, these mythological
concepts have to vanish. How would it be possible,
/Sankara says (p. 593), that he who is free from all
attachments, unchangeable and unmoved, should ap-
proach another person, should move or go to another
place. The highest oneness, if once truly conceived,
excludes anything like an approach to a different
object, or to a distant place 1 .

The Sanskrit language has the great advantage that
it can express the difference between the qualified and
the unqualified Brahman, by a mere change of gender,
Brahman (nom. Brahma) being used as a masculine,
when it is meant for the qualified, and as a neuter
(nom. Brahma), when it is meant for the unqualified
1 III. 3, 29.

284

LECTUBE IX.

Brahman, the Absolute Being. This is a great help,
and there is nothing corresponding to it in English.

We must remember also that the fundamental prin-
ciple of the Vedanta-philosophy, was not c Thou art
He l but Thou art That , and that it was not Thou wilt
be , but Thou art . This c Thou art 5 expresses some-
thing that is, that has been, and always will be, not
something that has still to be achieved, or is to follow,
for instance, after death (p. 599).

Thus Sankara says, ‘If it is said that the soul
will go to Brahman, that means that it will in future
attain, or rather, that it will be in future what, though
unconsciously, it always has been, viz. Brahman.
For when we speak of some one going to some one
else, it cannot be one and the same who is distin-
guished as the subject and as the object. Also, if we
speak of worship, that can only be, if the worshipper
is different from the worshipped. By true knowledge
the individual soul does not become Brahman, but is
Brahman, as soon as it knows what it really is, and
always has been. Being and knowing are here simul-
taneous.

Here lies the characteristic difference between what
is generally called mystic philosophy and the Vedantic
theosophy of India. Other mystic philosophers are
fond of representing the human soul as burning with
love for God, as filled with a desire for union with or
absorption in God. We find little of that in the Upa-
nishads, and when such ideas occur, they are argued
away by the Ved&nta-philosophers. They always
cling to the conviction that the Divine has never been
really absent from the human soul, that it always is
there, though covered by darkness or Nescience, and

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

285

that as soon as that darkness or that Nescience is re-
moved, the soul is once more and in its own right
what it always has been ; it is, it does not become
Brahman.

BialogTie from the AA&ndogya-Upanisliaa.

There is a famous dialogue in the JiAandogya-
Upanishad between a young student Svetaketu and
his father Uddalaka Arum, in which the father tries
to convince the son that with all his theological
learning he knows nothing, and then tries to lead
him on to the highest knowledge, the Tat tv am asi,
or Thou art that (VI. 1) :

There lived once $vetaketu Aruneya. And his
father said to him : 4 $vetaketu, go to school, for there
is none belonging to our race, darling, who, not having-
studied, is, as it were, a Br&hma^a by birth only. 5

Having begun his apprenticeship (with a teacher)
when he was twelve years of age, /SVetaketu returned
to his father, when he was twenty-four, having then
studied all the Vedas, — conceited, considering himself
well read, and very stern.

His father said to him : 4 $vetaketu, as you are so
conceited, considering yourself so well-read, and so
stern, my dear, have you ever asked for that instruc-
tion by which we hear what is not audible, by which
we perceive what is not perceptible, by which we
know what is unknowable ? 9

4 What is that instruction, Sir? 5 he asked.

The father replied: 4 My dear, as by one clod of
clay all that is made of clay is known, the difference
being only a name, arising from speech, but the truth
being that all is clay ;

286 LECTURE IX.

"And as, my dear, by one nugget of gold all that is
made of gold is known, the difference being only a
name, arising from speech, but the truth being that
all is gold ;

c And as, my dear, by one pair of nail-scissors all
that is made of iron (k&rshmyasam) is known, the
difference being only a name, arising from speech, but
the truth being that all is iron, — thus, my dear, is
that instruction.'

The son said: 'Surely those venerable men (my
teachers) did not know that. For if they had known
it, why should they not have told it me ? Do you,
Sir, therefore, tell me that.'

You see what the father is driving at. What he
means is that when you see a number of pots and
pans and bottles and vessels of all kinds and of dif-
ferent names, they may seem different, and have
different names, but in the end they are all but clay,
varying in form and name. In the same manner, he
wishes to say, that the whole world, all that we see and
name, however different it seems in form and in
name, is in the end all Brahman. Form and name,
called namarupa in the philosophical language of
India, that is name and form, — name coming before
form, or, as we should say, the idea coming before
the eidos, the species, — come and go, they are
changing, if not perishing, and there remains only
what gives real reality to names and forms, the
eternal Brahman.

The father then continues :

£ In the beginning, my dear, there was that only
which is (to ov\ one only, without a second. Others
say, in the beginning there was that only which is

THE VEDInTA-PHILOSOPHY.

287

not (rd fir) ov) y one only, without a second ; and from
that which is not, that which is was born.

‘But how could it be thus, my dear? 5 the father
continued. ‘How could that which is, be bom of
that which is not? No, my dear, only that which is,
was in the beginning, one only, without a second.

‘It thought, may I be many, may I grow forth.
It sent forth fire.

‘That fire thought, may I be many, may I grow
forth. It sent forth water.

‘ Water thought, may I be many, may I grow forth.
It sent forth earth (food) \

‘ Therefore whenever it rains anywhere, most food
is then produced. From water alone is eatable food
produced/

‘ As the bees (VI. 9), my son, make honey by col-
lecting the juices of different trees, and reduce the juice
into one form,

‘ And as these juices have no discrimination, so that
they might say, I am the juice of this tree or of that tree,
in the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when
they have become merged in the True (either in deep
sleep or in death), know not that they are merged in
the True.

* Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion,
or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat,
or a musquito, that they become again and again.

‘Now that which is that subtile essence, in it all
that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self,
and thou, 0 $vetaketu, art it/

‘ Please, Sir, inform me still more/ said the son.

1 Nearly the same succession of fire, air, water, earth is found in
Plato, Timaeus, 56.

288

LECTUBE IX.

c Be it so, my child/ the father replied (YI. 10).
e These rivers, my son, run, the eastern (like the
Gahga) toward the east, the western (like the Sindhu)
toward the west. They go from sea to sea (i. e. the
clouds lift up the water from the sea to the sky, and
send it back as rain to the sea). They become indeed
sea. And as those rivers, when they are in the sea,
do not know, I am this or that river,

4 In the same manner, my son, all these creatures,
when they have come back from the True, know not
that they have come back from the True. Whatever
these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf,
or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a
musquito, that they become again and again.

‘That which is that subtile essence, in it all that
exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and
thou, 0 Svetaketu, art it/

4 Please, Sir, inform me still more/ said the son.

‘Be it so, my child/ the father replied (VI. 11).
c If some on© were to strike at the root of this large
tree here, it would bleed, but live. If he were to
strike at its stem, it would bleed, but live. If he
were to strike at its top, it would bleed, but live.
Pervaded by the living Self that tree stands firm,
drinking in its nourishment and rejoicing ;

‘But if the life (the living Self) leaves one of its
branches, that branch withers ; if it leaves a second,
that branch withers ; if it leaves a third, that branch
withers. If it leaves the whole tree, the whole tree
withers. In exactly the same manner, my son, know
this/ Thus he spoke :

‘This (body) indeed withers and dies when the
living Self has left it ; the living Self never dies.

THE YEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

289

'That which is that subtile essence, in it all that
exists has its self- It is the True. It is the Self, and
thou, 0 Svetaketu, art it/

‘ Please, Sir, inform me still more/ said the son.

‘Be it so, my child/ the father replied (VI. 18).
'Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in
the morning/

The son did as he was commanded.

The father said to him : c Bring me the salt, which
you placed in the water last night/

The son having looked for it, found it not, for,* of
course, it was melted.

The father said : ' Taste it from the surface of the
water. How is it ? 5

The son replied : ' It is salt/

' Taste it from the middle. How is it ? *

The son replied : f It is salt/

' Taste it from the bottom. How is it ? 5
The son replied : ' It is salt/

The father said : 4 Throw it away and then wait
on me/

He did so ; but salt exists for ever.

Then the father said: 'Here also, in this body,
forsooth, you do not perceive the True (Sat), my son ;
but there indeed it is.

‘That which is the subtile essence, in it all that
exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and
thou, 0 /Svetaketu, art it/

' Please, Sir, inform me still more/ said the son.

‘Be it so, my child/ the father replied (VI. 15).
e If a man is ill, his relatives assemble round him
and ask: “Dost thou know me? Dost thou know
me?” Now as long as his speech is not merged in

(4) U

290

LECTURE IX.

his mind, his mind in breath, his breath in heat (fire),
heat in the Highest Godhead (devat&), he knows
them.

f But when his speech is merged in his mind, his
mind in breath, breath in heat (fire), heat in the
Highest Godhead, then he knows them not.

‘ That which is the subtile essence, in it all that
exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and
thou, 0 $vetaketu, art it.’

Union not Absorption.

In this dialogue as given in the TJpanishad we have
before us a more popular and not yet systematised
view of the Vedanta. There are several passages
indeed which seem to speak of the union and absorp-
tion of the soul rather than of its recovery of its true
nature. Such passages, however, are always ex-
plained away by the stricter Vedanta-philosophers,
and they have no great difficulty in doing this. For
there remains always the explanation that the quali-
fied personal Brahman in the masculine gender is
meant, and not yet the highest Brahman which is
free from all qualities. That modified personal
Brahman exists for all practical purposes, till its
unreality has been discovered through the discovery of
the Highest Brahman; and as, in one sense, the modi-
fied 'masculine Brahman is the highest Brahman, if
only we know it, and shares all its true reality
with the Highest Brahman, as soon as we know it,
many things may in a less strict sense be predicated
of Him , the modified Brahman, which in truth apply
to It only, the Highest Brahman. This amphiboly
runs through the whole of the Vedanta-sfitras, and a

THE vedanta-philosophy. 291

considerable portion of the Sutras is taken up with
the task of showing that when the qualified Brahman
seems to be meant, it is really the unqualified Brah-
man that ought to be understood. Again, there are
ever so many passages in the Upanishads which seem
to refer to the individual soul, but which, if properly
explained, must be considered as referring to the
Highest Atman, that gives support and reality to the
individual soul. This at least is the view taken by
Sankara, whereas, as I hinted before, from an histori-
cal point of view, it would seem as if there had been
different stages in the development of the belief in
the Highest Brahman and in the highest Atman, and
that some passages in the Upanishads belong to
earlier phases of Indian thought, when Brahman was
still conceived simply as the highest deity, and true
blessedness was supposed to consist in the gradual
approach of the soul to the throne of God.

Knowledge, not Love of God.

Anything like a passionate yearning of the soul
after God, which forms the key-note of almost all
religions, is therefore entirely absent from the Vedanta-
sutras. The fact of the unity of soul and God is
taken for granted from the beginning, or at all events
as sufficiently proved by the revealed utterances of
the Upanishads*

The Tat tvam asi, ‘Thou art that/ is accepted by the
Vedantists in a dry and matter-of-fact spirit. It
forms the foundation of a most elaborate system of
philosophy, of which I shall now try to give you an
idea, though it can be very general only.

292

LECTURE IX.

Avidya or Nescience.

The fundamental principle of the Vedanta-philo-
sophy that in reality there exists and there can exist
nothing but Brahman, that Brahman is everything,
the material as well as the efficient cause of the
universe, is of course in contradiction with our
ordinary experience. In India, as anywhere else, man
imagines at first that he, in his individual, bodily,
and spiritual character, is something that exists, and
that all the objects of the outer world also exist, as
objects. Idealistic philosophy has swept away this
world-old prejudice more thoroughly in India than
anywhere else. The Vedanta-philosopher, however,
is not only confronted with this difficulty which
affects every philosophy, but he has to meet another
difficulty peculiar to himself. The whole of the Veda
is in his eyes infallible, yet that Veda enjoins the
worship of many gods, and even in enjoining the
worship (upasana) of Brahman, the highest deity, in
his active, masculine, and personal character, it recog-
nises an objective deity, different from the subject
that is to offer worship and sacrifice to him.

Hence the Vedanta-philosopher has to tolerate many
things. He tolerates the worship of an objective
Brahman, as a preparation for the knowledge of the
subjective and objective, or the absolute Brahman,
which is the highest object of his philosophy. He
admits one Brahman endowed with quality, but high
above the usual gods of the Veda. This Brahman is
reached by the pious on the path of the gods ; he can
be worshipped, and it is he who rewards the pious
for their good works. Still, even he is in that cha-
racter the result of nescience (Avidj^a), of the same

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

293

nescience which prevents the soul of man, the Atman,
from distinguishing itself from its incumbrances (the
so-called Upadhis), such as the body, the organs of
sense and their works.

This nescience can be removed by science or know-
ledge only, and this knowledge or vidya is imparted
by the Vedanta, which shows that all our ordinary
knowledge is simply the result of ignorance or ne-
science, is uncertain, deceitful, and perishable, or as we
should say, is phenomenal, relative, and conditioned.
The true knowledge, called samyagdarsana or com-
plete insight, cannot be gained by sensuous perception
(pratyaksha) nor by inference (anumana), nor can
obedience to the law of the Veda produce more than
a temporary enlightenment or happiness. According
to the orthodox Vedantist, Sruti alone, or what is called
revelation, can impart that knowledge and remove
that nescience which is innate in human nature.

Of the Higher Brahman nothing can be predicated
but that it is, and that through our nescience, it ap-
pears to be this or that.

When a great Indian sage was asked to describe
Brahman, he was simply silent — that was his answer.
But when it is said that Brahman is, that means at
the same time that Brahman is not; that is to say,
that Brahman is nothing of what is supposed to exist
in our sensuous perceptions.

Brahman as sat, as kit, and as &nanda.

There are two other qualities, how T ever, which may
safely be assigned to Brahman, namely, that it is
intelligent, and that it is blissful ; or rather, that it is
intelligence and bliss. Intelligent seems the nearest

294

LECTURE IX.

approach to the Sk. hi t and 7caitanya. Spiritual
■would not answer, because it would not express more
than that it is not material. But hi t means that it is,
that it perceives and knows, though as it can per-
ceive itself only, we may say that it is lighted up by
its own light or knowledge, or as it is sometimes
expressed, that it is pure knowledge and pure light.
Perhaps we shall best understand what is meant by
kit , when we consider what is negatived by it,
namely, dulness, deafness, darkness, and all that is
material. In several passages a third quality is hinted
at, namely, blissfulness, but this again seems only
another name for perfection, and chiefly intended to
exclude the idea of any possible suffering in Brahman.

It is in the nature of this Brahman to be always
subjective, and hence it is said that it cannot be
known in the same way as all other objects are
known, but only as a knower knows that he know's
and that he is.

Philosophy and Religion.

Still, whatever is and whatever is known, — two
things which in the Vedanta, as in all other idealistic
systems of philosophy, are identical, — all is in the end
Brahman. Though we do not know it, it is Brahman
that is known to us, when conceived as the author
or creator of the world, an office, according to Hindu
ideas, quite unworthy of the Godhead in its true
character. It is the same Brahman that is known to
us in our own self-consciousness. Whatever we may
seem to be, or imagine ourselves to be for a time,
we are in truth the eternal Brahman, the eternal Self.
With this conviction in the background, the Ved&ntist

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

295

retains his belief in what he calls the Lord God, the
creator and ruler of the world, but only as phe-
nomenal, or as adapted to the human understanding.

Tke Supreme hoxd or fsvara.

Men are to believe in a personal God, with the same
assurance with which they believe in their own
personal self; and can there be a higher assurance?
They are to believe in him as the creator and ruler of
the world (sams&ra), and as determining the effects
or rewards of good and evil works (karman). He
may be worshipped even, but we must always re-
member that what is worshipped is only a person,
or, as the Brahmans call it, a pratika, an aspect of
the true eternal Essence, as conceived by us in our
inevitably human and limited knowledge. Thus the
strictest observance of religion is insisted on while
we are what we are. We are told that there is truth
in the ordinary belief in God as the creator or cause
of the world, but a relative truth only, relative to the
human understanding, just as there is truth in the
perception of our senses, and in the belief in our
personality, but a relative truth only. This relative
truth must bo carefully distinguished from falsehood.
His belief in the Veda would suffice to prevent the
Vedantist from a denial of the gods or from what
we should call Atheism, or rather, as I explained,
Adevism.

In deference to the Veda the Vedantist has even to
admit, if not exactly a creation, at least a repeated
emanation of the world from Brahman and re-
absorption of it into Brahman, from kalpa to kalpa,
or from age to age.

296

LECTURE IS.

Up&dbii, Sukslunasarxra, and Stkulasarira.

If we ask, what led to a belief in individual souls,
the answer we get is the TTp&dhis, the surround-
ings or incumbrances, that is, the body with the breath
or life in it, the organs of sense, and the mind. These
together form the subtle body (the sukshmasarira)
and this sukshmasarira is supposed to survive, while
death can destroy the coarse body only (the sth&la-
sarira). The individual soul is held by this subtle
body, and its fates are determined by acts which are
continuing in their consequences, and which persist
in their effects for ever, or at least until true know-
ledge has arisen, and put an end even to the subtle
body and to all phantasms of nescience:

Creation or Emanation.

How the emanation of the world from Brahman is
conceived in the Vedanta-philosophy is of small
interest. It is almost purely mythological, and pre-
sents a very low stage of physical science. Brahman
is not indeed represented any longer as a maker, or a
creator, as an architect or a potter. What we trans-
late by creation (srishri) means really no more than
a letting out, and corresponds closely with the theory
of emanation, as held by some of the most eminent
Christian philosophers. There are few opinions that
have not been condemned by some Council or Pope
as heretical ; but I know of no Council that has con-
demned as heretical the theory of Emanation instead
of Creation or Fabrication. But if belief in emanation
instead of creation has been condemned by the Church,

THE VEDANTA-PHXLOSOPHY.

297

then the Church has condemned some of its strongest
supporters as heretics. It would be easy to put such
men as Dionysius and Scotus Erigena, or even St.
Clement, out of court, as claiming the character of
orthodox theologians. But what should we say of
Thomas Aquinas, the very bulwark of catholic ortho-
doxy? And yet he too declares in so many words
(Summa p. 1. 9-19 a4 ) that creatio is emanatio tot bus
entis ab uno. Eckhart and the German Mystics all
hold the same opinion, an opinion which, though it
may run counter to Genesis, seems in no way incom-
patible with the spirit of the New Testament.

The Upanishads propose ever so many similes by
which they wish to render the concept of creation
or emanation more intelligible. One of the oldest
similes applied to the production of the world from
Brahman is that of the spider drawing forth, that is
producing, the web of the world from itself. If we
were to say, No, the world was created out of Nothing,
the Vedantist would say, By all means; but he would
remind us that, if God is All in All, then even the
Nothing could not be anything else, anything out-
side the Absolute Being, for that Being cannot be
conceived as encompassed or limited whether by any-
thing or by nothing.

Another simile which is meant to do away with
what there is left of efficient, besides material causality
in the simile of the spider, which after all wills
the throwing out and drawing back of the threads
of the world, is that of the hair growing from the
skull.

Nor is the theory of what we, as the most recent
invention, call Evolution or development, wanting in

298

LECTURE XX,

the Upanishads. One of the most frequent similes
used for this, is the change of milk into curds, the
curds being nothing but the milk, only under a dif-
ferent form. It was soon found, however, that this
simile violated the postulate, that the One Being must
not only be One, but that, if perfect in itself, it must
be unchangeable. Then a new theory came in, which
is the theory adopted by Sankara. It is distinguished
by the name of Vivarta from the Parm&ma or
Evolution theory which is held by R&m&nu^a. Vivarta
means turning away. It teaches that the Supreme
Being remains always unchanged, and that our be-
lieving that anything else can exist beside it, arises
from Avidy&, that is, Nescience. Most likely this
Avidy& or ignorance was at first conceived as purely
subjective, for it is illustrated by the ignorance of
a man who mistakes a rope for a snake. In this case
the rope remains all the time what it is ; it is only
our own ignorance which frightens us and determines
our actions. In the same way Brahman always re-
mains the same; it is our ignorance only which
makes us see a phenomenal world and a phenomenal
God. Another favourite simile is our mistaking
mother-of-pearl for silver. The Ved&ntist says: We
may take it for silver, but it always remains mother-
of-pearl. So we may speak of the snake and the
rope, or of the silver and the mother-of-pearl, as being
one. And yet we do not mean that the rope has
actually undergone a change, or has turned into a
snake, or that mother-of-pearl has turned into silver.
After that, the Ved&ntists argue, that what the rope
is to the snake, the Supreme Being is to the world
(Nilaka^Aa Gore, lib. cit., p, 179). They go on to

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

299

explain that when they hold that the world is Brah-
man, they do not mean that Brahman is actually
transformed into the world, for Brahman cannot
change and cannot be transformed. They mean that
Brahman presents itself as the world, or appears to
be the world. The world’s reality is not its own, but
Brahman’s ; yet Brahman is not the material cause
of the world, as the spider is of the web, or the milk
of the curds, or the sea of the foam, or the clay of
the jar which is made by the potter, but only the
substratum, the illusory material cause. There would
be no snake without the rope, there would be no
world without Brahman, and yet the rope does not
become a snake, nor does Brahman become the world.
With the Vedantist the phenomenal and the nou-
menal are essentially the same. The silver, as we
perceive and call it, is the same as the mother-of-
pearl; without the mother-of-pearl, there would be
no silver for us. We impart to mother-of-pearl the
name and the form of silver, and by the same process
by which we thus create silver, the whole woidd was
created by words and forms. A modern Vedantist,
Pramadad&sa Mitra, employs another simile in order
to explain to European scholars the true meaning
of the Vedanta. ‘ A man/ he says, 4 is created a Peer,
by being called a Peer, and being invested with a
Peer s robe. But what he really is, is not a Peer — he
is what he always has been, a man — he is, as we
should say, a man for all that/ Pramadadasa Mitra
concludes, £ In the same manner as we see that a Peer
can be created, the whole world was created, by
simply receiving name and form/ If he had known
Plato, instead of name and form, he would have

300

LECTURE IX,

spoken of ideas, as imparting form and name to what
was before formless and nameless.

Far be it' from me to say that these similes or the
theories which they are meant to adumbrate can be
considered as a real solution of the old problem of
the creation or of the relation between the absolute
and the relative ; but after all we think very much in
similes, and these Ved&ntic similes are at least original,
and deserve a place by the side of many others.
Besides, the Vedantist is by no means satisfied with
these similes. He has elaborated his own plan of
creation. He distinguishes a number of stages in the
emanation of the world, but to us these stages are
of less interest than the old similes. The first stage
is called ak&sa, which may be translated by ether,
though it corresponds very nearly to what we mean
by space. It is, we are told, all-pervading (vibhu),
and often takes its place as the fifth element and
therefore as something material. It is from this ether
that air emanates (vayu), from* air, fire (agni, tegras),
from fire, water (&pas), from water, earth (pnthivi or
annam, lit. food). Corresponding to these five ele-
ments as objects, there emanate likewise from Brah-
man the five senses, the sense of hearing correspond-
ing to ether , the senses of touch and hearing as cor-
responding to air , the senses of sight, touch, and
hearing as corresponding to fire, the senses of taste,
sight, touch, and hearing as corresponding to water ,
and lastly, the senses of smelling, tasting, seeing,
touching, and hearing as corresponding to earth .

After this emanation of the elements, and of the
senses which correspond to them, has taken place,
Brahman is supposed to enter into them. The indi-

THE VEDiNTA-PHILOSOPHY.

301

vidual souls also, which, after each return of the
world into Brahman, continue to exist in Brahman,
are supposed to awake from their deep slumber
(mayamayi mahasushupti), and to receive each ac-
cording to its former works, a body, either divine,
or human, or animal, or vegetable. Their subtle
bodies then assume again some of the coarser ele-
ments, and the senses become developed and differen-
tiated, while the Self or Atman keeps aloof, or
remains as a simple ivitness of all the causes and
effects which form the new body and its sur-
roundings. Each body grows by absorbing portions
of the coarser elementary substances, everything
grows, decays, and changes, but the grown-up man
is nevertheless the same as the young child or the
embryo, because the Self, the witness in all its aloof-
ness, remains throughout the same. The embryo,
or the germ of the embryo, was, as we saw in a former
lecture, supposed to have entered into the father in
the shape of heavenly food, conveyed by the rain
from the sky or the moon. When it has been ab-
sorbed by man, it assumes the nature of seed, and
while dwelling in the womb of a mother changes its
subtle body into a material body. Whenever this
material body decays again and dies, the soul with
its subtle body leaves it, but though free from the
material body, it retains its moral responsibility, and
remains liable to the consequences of the acts which
it performed while in the coarse material body. These
consequences are good or evil ; if good, the soul may
be bom in a more perfect state, nay, even as a divine
being and enjoy divine immortality, may, in fact
become a god like Indra and the rest ; but even that

302

LECTURE IX.

divine immortality will have an end whenever the
universal emanation returns to Brahman.

If we distinguish, as many philosophers have done,
between existence (Dasein) and Being (Sein), then all
being is Brahman, nothing can be except Brahman,
while all that exists is simply an illusory, not a
real modification of Brahman, and is caused by name
and form (nama-riipa). The whole world is therefore
said to be viHrambha^a, beginning with the word , the
word being here taken in the sense of idea, or concept
or Logos. We must never forget that the world is
only what it is conceived to be, or what by name and
form it has been made to be, while from the highest
point of view all these names and forms vanish, when
the Samy agdarsan a, the true knowledge, arises, and
everything becomes known as Brahman only. We
should probably go a step further, and ask, whence
the names and forms, and whence all that phantas-
magoria of unreality? The Vedantist has but one
answer : it is simply due to Avidya, to nescience ; and
this nescience too is not real or eternal, it is only for
a time, and it vanishes by knowledge. We cannot
deny the fact, though we cannot explain the cause.
There are again plenty of similes which the Vedantist
produces ; but similes do not explain facts. For in-
stance, we see names and forms in a dream, and yet
they are not real. As soon as we awake, they vanish,
and we know they were but dreams. Again, we
imagine in the dark that we see a serpent and try
to run away, but as soon as there is light, we are no
longer frightened, we know that it is a rope only.
Or again, there are certain affections of the eye, when
the eye sees two moons. We know that there can be

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY,

303

only one, as we know that there can be only one
Brahman; but till our eyes are really cured, we cannot
help seeing two moons.

Again, it seems that Indian jugglers knew how to
make people believe that they saw two or three
jugglers, while there was only one. The juggler
himself remained one, knew himself to be one only,
like Brahman, but to the spectators he appeared as
many.

There is another simile to which I have already
alluded. If blue or red colour touches a pure crystal,
however much we may be convinced that the crystal
is pure and transparent, we cannot separate the blue
colour from it till we remove all surrounding objects,
like the upadhis or surroundings of the soul. But all
these are similes only, and with us there would
always remain the question, Whence this nescience 1

Braliman and Avidya, tlie Cause of tlie Phenomenal World.

The Vedantist is satisfied with the conviction that
for a time we are , as a matter of fact, nescient, and
what he cares for chiefly is to find out, not how that
nescience arose, but how it can be removed. After
a time that nescience or Avidya came to be considered
as a kind of independent power, called Maya, illusion ;
she became even a woman. But in the beginning May&
meant nothing but absence of true knowledge, that is,
absence of the knowledge of Brahman,

From the Ved&ntist point of view, however, there is
no real difference between cause and effect. Though
he» might admit that Brahman is the cause, and the
phenomenal world the effect, he would at once qualify
that admission by saying that cause and effect must

804

LECTURE IX.

never be considered as different in substance, that
Brahman always remains the same, whether looked
upon as cause or as effect, just as the substance is the
same in milk and curds, though from our nescience
we may call the one cause, and the other effect.

You see that if we once grant to the Vedantist that
there exists one Infinite Being only, it follows that there
is no room for anything else by the side of it, and that
in some way or other the Infinite or Brahman must
be everywhere and everything.

The Essence of Man.

There is only one thing which seems to assert its
independence, and that is the subjective Self, the Self
within us, not the Ego or the person, but what lies
behind the Ego and behind the person. Every possible
view as to what man really is, that has been put
forward by other philosophers, is carefully examined
and rejected by the Vedantist. It had been held that
what constituted the essence of man was a body
endowed with intelligence, or the intellectual organs
of sense, or the mind (manas) or mere knowledge, or
even absolute emptiness, or again the individual soul
reaching beyond the body, active and passive in its
various states, or the Self that suffers and enjoys.
But not one of these views is approved of by the
Vedantist. It is impossible, he says, to deny the
existence of a Self in man, for he who denies it would
himself be that Self which he denies. No Self can
deny itself. But as there is no room in the world for
anything but Brahman, the Infinite Being, it follows
that the Self of man can be nothing but that very
Brahman in its entirety, not only a portion or a

THE YEDiNTA-PHILOSOPHY.

305

modification of It, so that whatever applies to Brah-
man applies also to the Self In man. As Brahman is
altogether knowledge, so is the Self ; as Brahman is
omnipresent or all-pervading (vibhu), so is the Self.
As Brahman is omniscient and omnipotent, so is the
Self. As Brahman is neither active nor passive, neither
enjoying nor suffering, so is the Self, or rather, so must
be the Self, if it is what it is, the only thing that it
can be, namely Brahman. If for the present the Self
seems to be different, seems to be suffering and en-
joying, active and passive, limited in knowledge and
power, this can be the result of nescience only, or
of a belief in the Upadhis or hindrances of true
knowledge. It is owing to these Upddhis that the
omnipresent Self in the individual is not omnipresent,
but confined to the heart; is not omniscient, is not
omnipotent, but ignorant and weak ; is not an in-
different witness, but active and passive, a doer and
an enjoyer, and fettered or determined by its former
works. Sometimes it seems as if the Upadkis were
the cause of nescience, but in reality it is nescience
that causes the Upadhis 1 . These Upadhis or in-
cumbrances are, besides the outer world, and the
coarse body, the mukhya prawa, the vital spirit,
the Manas, mind, the Indriyas, the senses. These
three together form the vehicle of the soul after
death, and supply the germ for a new life. The
sukshmasarira, the fine body, in which they dwell,
is invisible, yet material, extended, and transparent
(p. 508). I believe it is this fine body, the sukshma-
sarira, which the modern Theosophists have changed

1 Ved. Sutras III. 2, 15, upadhin&m Mvidy&pratyupasthitatv&t.
(4) X

306

LECTUBE IX.

into their astral body, taking the theories of the
ancient Rishis for matters of fact. It is called the
&sraya or abode of the soul, it consists of the finest
parts of the elements that form the germ of the body
(dehavi^ani bhutasukshm&m), or, according to some
passages, it consists of water (p. 401), or something
like water. This fine body never quits the soul, and
so long as the world (sams&ra) lasts, the soul clothed
in this fine body assumes new and coarser bodies
again and again. Even when it has reached the path
of the gods and the throne of Brahman, the soul is
still supposed to be clothed in its fine body. This fine
body, however, consists not only of the faculties of
sensuous perception (indriy&m), of mind (manas), and
of vital breath (mukhyapri-na), but its character is
likewise determined by former acts, by karman.

Harman or Apurva.

In the Pftrvamim&ms& this continuity between acts
and their consequences is called Apfirva, literally, that
which did not exist before, but was brought about in
this life or in a former life. When the work has been
done and is past, but its effect has not yet taken place,
there remains something which after a time is certain
to produce a result, a punishment for evil deeds, a
reward for good deeds. This idea of ffaimini is not,
however, adopted without modification by B&darayawa.
Another teacher attributes rewards and punishments
of former acts to the influence of Isvara, the lord,
though admitting at the same time that the Lord or
the Creator of the world does no more than superintend
the universal working of cause and effect. This is
explained by the following illustration. We see a

THE VEDiNTA-PHILOSOPH Y.

307

plant springing from its seed, growing, flowering, and
at last dying. But it does not die altogether. Some-
thing is left, the seed, and in order that this seed
may live and thrive rain is necessary. What is
thus achieved by the rain in the vegetable world,
is supposed to be achieved by the Lord in the moral
world, in fact in the whole creation. Without God
or without the rain, the seed would not grow at all,
but that it grows thus or thus is not due to the rain,
but to the seed itself.

And this serves in the Vedanta-philosophy as a
kind of solution for the problem of the existence of
evil in the world. God is not the author of evil, He
did not create the evil, but He simply allowed or
enabled the good or evil deeds of former worlds to
bear fruit in this world. The Creator therefore does
not in His creation act at random, but is guided in
His acts by the determining influence of karman or
work done.

Different States of tlie Soul.

We have still to consider some rather fanciful
theories with regard to the different states of the
individual soul. It is said to exist in four states, in
a state of wakefulness or awareness, of dream, of deep
sleep, and, lastly, of death. In the state of wake-
fulness the soul dwelling in the heart pervades the
whole body, knowing and acting by means of the
mind (manas) and the senses (indriyas). In the state
of dreaming, the soul uses the mind only, in which
the senses have been absorbed, and, moving through
the veins of the body, sees the impressions (vasanas)
left by the senses during the state of wakefulness. In

308

LECTURE IX.

the third stage the soul is altogether freed from the
mind also, both the mind and the senses are absorbed
in the vital spirit 3 which alone continues active in the
body, while the soul, now free from all upadhis or
fetters, returns for a time to Brahman within the
heart. On awaking, however, the soul loses its
temporary identity with Brahman, and becomes again
what it was before, the individual soul

In the fourth state, that of death, the senses are
absorbed in the mind, the mind in the vital spirit,
the vital spirit in the moral vehicle of the soul, and
the soul in the fine body (sfikshmasarira). "When
this absorption or union has taken place, the ancient
Vedantists believe that the point of the heart becomes
luminous so as to illuminate the path on which the
soul with its surrounding (up&dhis) escapes from the
body. The Soul or Self which obtains true knowledge
of the Highest Self, regains its identity with the
Highest Self, and then enjoys what even in the
Upanishads and before the rise of Buddhism is called
Nirvana or eternal peace.

Kramamukti.

It is generally supposed that this idea of Nirvana
is peculiar to Buddhism, but like many Buddhist
ideas, this also can be shown to have its roots in the
Vedic world. If this Nirvana is obtained step by
step, beginning with the Path of the Fathers, or the
Path ‘of the Gods, then leading to a blissful life in the
world of Brahman and then to the true knowledge of
the identity of Atman, the soul, with Brahman, it is
called Kramamukti, i.e. gradual liberation.

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

<?xvaamufcti.

But the same knowledge may be obtained in this
life also, in the twinkling of an eye, without waiting
for death, or for resurrection and ascension to the world
of the fathers, the gods, and the god Brahman ; and
this state of knowledge and liberation, if obtained
by a man while still in the body, is called by later
philosophers trivanmukti, life-liberation.

It may take place in this life, without the help
of death, and without what is called the UtkrUnti
or the Exodus of the soul.

The explanation given of this state of perfect
spiritual freedom, while the soul is still in the body,
is illustrated by the simile of a potter’s wheel, which
goes on moving for a time, even though the impetus
that set it going has ceased. The soul is free, but the
works of a former existence, if they have once begun
to bear fruit, must go on bearing fruit till they are
quite exhausted, while other works which have not
yet begun to bear fruit may be entirely burnt up by
knowledge.

If we ask whether this Nirvana of the Brahman
means absorption or annihilation, the Ved&ntist,
different from the Buddhist, would not admit either*.
The soul is not absorbed in Brahman, because it has
never left Brahman ; there can be nothing different
from Brahman; nor can it be annihilated, because
Brahman cannot be annihilated, and the soul has
always been nothing bub Brahman in all its fulness ;
the new knowledge adds nothing to what the soul
always was, nor does it take away anything except

310

LECTUKE IX.

that nescience which for a time darkened the self-
knowledge of the soul.

These living freed souls enjoy perfect happiness
and ease, though still imprisoned in the body. They
have obtained true Nirvana, that is, freedom from
passion and immunity from being bom again. Thus
the Brihadara^yaka-Upanishad IV. 4, 6 says: 'He
who is without desire, free from desire, whose desires
have been fulfilled, whose desire is the self, his vital
spirits do not emigrate ; being Brahman, he becomes
Brahman.’

We should ask at once, Does then the soul, after it
has obtained the knowledge of its true essence, retain
its personality?

Personality of the Soul,

But such a question is impossible for the true
V edantist, F or terrestrial personality is to him a fetter
and a hindrance, and freedom from that fetter is the
highest object of his philosophy, is the highest bliss
to which the Vedantist aspires. That freedom and
that highest bliss are simply the result of true know-
ledge, of a kind of divine self-recollection. Everything
else remains as it is. It is true the Ved&ntist speaks
of the individual soul as poured into the Universal
Soul like pure water poured into pure water. The
two can no longer be distinguished by name and
form; yet the Ved&ntist lays great stress on the fact
that the pure water is not lost in the pure water, as
little as the Atman is lost in Brahman. As Brah-
man^ is pure knowledge and consciousness, so is
the Atman, when freed, pure knowledge and con-

1 Nitya-upalabdhisvarupa. Deussen, p. 346.

THE VEDANTA-PHILOSOPHY.

311

sciousness, while in the body it is limited knowledge
and limited consciousness, limited personality only.
Anything like separateness from Erahman is impossi-
ble, for Brahman is all in all.

Whatever we may think of this philosophy, we
cannot deny its metaphysical boldness and its logical
consistency. If Brahman is all in all, the One without
a second, nothing can be said to exist that is not
Brahman. There is no room for anything outside
the Infinite and the Universal, nor is there room for
two Infinites, for the Infinite in nature and the
Infinite in man. There is and there can be one
Infinite, one Brahman only; this is the beginning and
end of the Vedanta, and I doubt whether Natural
Beligion can reach or has ever reached a higher point
than that reached by $ankara, as an interpreter of
the Upanishads.

LECTUEE X.

THE TWO SCHOOLS OP THE YEDANTA.
Equivocal Passages in the Upanisliads.

I N laying before you a short outline of the Y ed&nta-
philosophy, I had several times to call your
attention to what I called the equivocality which is per-
ceptible in theTJpanishads. and likewise in the Yedanta-
sutras. In one sense everything that exists may be
considered as Brahman, only veiled by nescience, while
in another sense nothing that exists is Brahman in
its true and real character. This equivocality applies
with particular force to the individual soul and to the
Creator. The individual soul would be nothing if it
were not Brahman, yet nothing of what is predicated
of the individual soul can be predicated of Brahman.
A great portion of the Vedanta-sfttras is occupied with
what may be called philosophical exegesis, that is,
w T ith an attempt to determine whether certain passages
in the Upanishads refer to the individual soul or to
Brahman. Considering that the individual soul has been
and will be, in fact always is, Brahman, if only it knew
it, it is generally possible to argue that what is said of
the individual soul, is in the end said of Brahman.
The same applies to the personal God, the Creator, or
as he is commonly called, tsvara, the Lord. He, too, is

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. 313

in reality Brahman, so that here again many things
predicated of him may in the end be referred to
Brahman, the Supreme Being, in its non-phenomenal
character.

This amphiboly of thought and expression has found
its final expression in the two schools which for many
centuries have claimed to be the true representatives
of the Vedanta, that of /Sankara and that of Rama-
nuja. I have generally followed the guidance of
/Sankara, as he seems to me to cany the Ved&nta
doctrine to the highest point, but I feel bound to say
that Professor Thibaut has proved that Ramanuja
is on many points the more faithful interpreter
of the Vedanta-siitras. /Sankara is the more philo-
sophical head, while Ramanuja has become the suc-
cessful founder of one of the most popular religious
sects, chiefly, it seems, because he did not carry the
Vedanta to its last consequences, and because he man-
aged to reconcile his more metaphysical speculations
with the religious worship of certain popular deities,
which he was ready to accept as symbolical represen-
tations of the Universal Godhead. Nor was Rama-
nuja a mere dissentient from /Sankara. Be claimed
for his interpretation of the Vedanta the authority of
philosophers more ancient even than /Sankara, and, of
course, the authority of the Vedanta-siitras them-
selves, if only rightly understood. Ramanuja’s fol-
lowers do not possess now, so far as I know, manu-
scripts of any of these more ancient commentaries, but
there is no reason to doubt that Bodhayana and other
philosophers to whom Ramanuja appeals, were real
characters and in their time influential teachers of the
Vedanta.

314

LECTUEE X.

Sankara and Ramanuja.

R&manugra and /Sankara agree, of course, on many
points, yet the points on which they differ possess a
peculiar interest. They are not mere matters of
interpretation with regard to the Sutras or the XJpani-
shads, but involve important principles. Both are
strictly monistic philosophers, or, at all events, try
hard to be so. They both hold that there exists and
that there can exist but one Absolute Being, which
supports all, comprehends all, and must help to explain
all. They differ, however, as to the way in which the
phenomenal universe is to be explained. /Sankara is
the more consistent monist. According to him, Brah-
man or Paramatman, the Highest Self, is always one
and the same, it cannot change, and therefore all the
diversity of the phenomenal world is phenomenal
only, or, as it may also be called, illusory, the result
of avidy& or of unavoidable nescience. They both
hold that whatever is real in this unreal world is
Brahman. Without Brahman even this unreal world
would be impossible, or, as we should say, there could
be nothing phenomenal, unless there was something
noumenal. But as there can be no change or variance
in the Supreme Being, the varying phenomena of the
outer world, as well as the individual souls that are
bom into the world, are not to be considered either
as portions or as modifications of Brahman. They are
things that could not be without Brahman ; their
deepest self lies in Brahman ; but what they Appear
to be is, according to /Sankara, the result of nescience,
of erroneous perception and equally erroneous concep-
tion. Here Ramanuja differs. He admits that all
that really exists is Brahman, and that there is and

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE TED ANT A. 315

can be nothing besides Brabman, but he does not
ascribe the elements of plurality in the phenomenal
world, including individual souls, to nescience, but to
Brahman itself.

Eamann^a.

Brahman becomes in fact, in the mind of Ramanuja,
not only the cause, but the real source of all that exists,
and according to him the variety of the phenomenal
world is a manifestation of what lies hidden in Brah-
man. All that thinks and all that does not think, the
kit and the a/dt, are real modes (prakara) of Brahman.
He is the an taryamin, the inwardrulerof the material
and the immaterial world. All individual souls are
real manifestations of the unseen Brahman, and will
preserve their individual character through all time
and eternity. Ramanuja admits the great renovations
of the world. At the end of each kalpa, all that exists
is wrapt up for a time (during the pralaya) in Brah-
man, to appear again as soon as Brahman wills a new
world (kalpa). The individual souls will then be once
more embodied, and receive bodies according to their
good Or evil deeds in a former life. Their final reward
is an approach to Brahman, as described in the old
Upanishads, and a life in a celestial paradise free from
all danger of a return to a new birth. There is no-
thing higher than that, according to Ramanuja,

^Sankara.

Sankara’s Brahman on the contrary is entirely free
from differences, and does not contain in itself the
seeds of the phenomenal world. It is without quali-
ties. Not even thought can be predicated of Brah-

316

LECTUEE X.

man, though intelligence constitutes its essence. All
that seems manifold and endowed with qualities is
the result of Avidy& or Nescience, a power which can-
not be called either real or unreal ; a power that is
altogether inconceivable, but the workings of which
are seen in the phenomenal world. What is called
Isvara or the Lord by E4manu(/a is, according to
Sankara, Brahman, as represented by Avidya or M&ya,
a personal creator and ruler of the world. This which
with R&manu</a is the Supreme Being, is in the eyes of
/Sankara the Lower Brahman only, the qualified or
phenomenal Brahman. This distinction between the
Parana and the Aparam Brahman, the Higher and the
Lower Brahman, does not exist for Ramanuja, while
it forms the essential feature of /Sankara’s Ved&ntism.
According to /Sankara, individual souls with their ex-
perience of an objective world, and that objective
world itself, are all false and the result of Avidya ; they
possess what is called a vy&vah&rika or practical
reality, but the individual souls (</iva) as soon as they
become enlightened, cease to identify themselves with
their bodies, their senses, and their intellect, and per-
ceive and enjoy their pure original Brahmahood. They
then, after having paid their debt for former deeds and
misdeeds, after having enjoyed their rewards in the
presence of the qualified Brahman and in a celestial
paradise, reach final rest in Brahman. Or they may
even in this life enter at once into their rest in Brah-
man, if only they have learnt from the Vedanta that
their true Self is the same and has always been
the same as the Highest Self, and the Highest
Brahman.

What has often been quoted as the shortest sum-

THE TWO SCHOOLS OP THE VEDANTA* 317

mary of the Vedanta in a couple of lines, represents
the Vedanta of Sankara, not of Ramanuja.

4 In half a couplet I will declare what has been declared in mil-
lions of volumes,

Brahma is true, the world is false, the soul is Brahma and is
nothing else/

Slokarclliena pravakshyami yad uktam granthakofibhi/i
Brahma satyam g agan mithya, grivo brahmaiva naparam 1 .

This is really a very perfect summary. It means:
What truly and really exists is Brahman, the One
Absolute Being ; the world is false, or rather is not
what it seems to be ; that is, everything that is pre-
sented to us by the senses is phenomenal and relative,
and can be nothing else. The soul again, or rather
every man’s soul, though it may seem to be this or
that, is in reality nothing but Brahman,

This is the quintessence of the Vedanta; the only
thing wanting in it is an account as to how the
phenomenal and the individual comes to be at all,
and in what relation it stands to what is absolutely
real, to Brahman.

It is on this point Sankara and Ramanuja differ,
Ramanuja holding the theory of evolution, the
Parmama-vada, /Sankara the theory of illusion, the
Vivarta-vada.

Intimately connected with this difference between
the two great Vedantist teachers, is another difference
as to the nature of God, as the Creator of the world.
R&m&nuja knows but one Brahman, and this, accord-
ing to him, is the Lord, who creates and rules the
world. /Sankara admits two Brahmans, the lower and
the higher, though in their essence they are but one.

1 A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems, by Nehe-
miah Nllakan^a Gore, translated by Fitz-Edward Hall. Calcutta,
1862.

318

LECTURE X.

Great as these differences on certain points of the
Vedanta-philosophy may seem between $ahkara and
Ram&nu</a, they vanish if we enter more deeply into
this ancient- problem. Or rather we can see that the
two meant much the same, though they expressed
themselves in different ways. Though /S'ankara looks
upon the individual soul and the personal God or
lavara as, like everything else, the result of Avidya,
nescience, or M&ya, illusion, we must remember that
what he calls unreal is no more than what we should
call phenomenal. His vyavaharika, or practical world,
is no more unreal than our phenomenal world, though
we distinguish it from the noumenal, or the Bing an
sich. It is as real as anything presented to us by our
senses ever can be. Nor is the vyavaharika or pheno-
menal God more unreal than the God whom we igno-
rantly worship. Avidya or nescience with Sankara
produces really the same effect as parm&ma or evolu-
tion with Ram&nm/a. With him there always remains
the unanswered question why Brahman, the perfect
Being, the only Being that can claim reality, should
ever have been subjected to parmama or change, why,
as Plato asks in the Sophist and the Parmenides, the one
should ever have become many; while /Sankara is more
honest in confessing, though indirectly, our ignorance
in ascribing all that we cannot understand in the
phenomenal world to that principle of Nescience which
is inherent in our nature, nay without which we should
not be what we are. To know this Avidy& consti-
tutes the highest wisdom which we can reach in this
life, whether we follow the teaching of /Safikara or
Ramanuja, of Sokrates or St. Paul. The old problem
remains the same whether we say that the unchange-

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. 319

able Brahman is changed, though we are ignorant
how, or whether we say that it is due to ignorance
that the unchangeable Brahman seems to be changed.
We have to choose between accepting Avidya as a fact
not to be accounted for, or accepting change in the
perfect Being as a fact not to be accounted for. This,
however, would carry us into fields of philosophy
which have never been cultivated by Indian thinkers,
and where they would decline to follow us.

But whatever we may think of their Vedantic specu-
lations, we cannot but admire the fearless consistency
with which these ancient philosophers, and more par-
ticularly /Sankara, argue from their premisses. If
Brahman is all in all, they say — if Brahman is the only
real Being — then the world also must be Brahman,
the only question being, how? /Sankara is quite con-
sistent when he says that without Brahman the world
would be impossible, just as we should say that with-
out the absolutely real the relatively real would be
impossible. And it is very important to observe
that the Vedantist does not go so far as certain Bud-
dhist philosophers who look upon the phenomenal
worid as simply nothing. No, their world is real,
only it is not what it seems to be. /Sankara claims
for the phenomenal world a reality sufficient for all
practical purposes (vy&vaharika), sufficient to deter-
mine our practical life, our moral obligations, nay even
our belief in a manifested or revealed God.

There is a veil, but the V edanta-philosophy teaches
us that the eternal light behind it can always be per-
ceived more or less darkly, or more or less clearly,
through philosophical knowledge. It can be per-
ceived, because in reality it is always there. It has

320

LECTURE X.

been said that the personal or manifested God of the
Vedantists, whether they call Him tsvara, Lord, or
any other name, possesses no absolute, but a relative
reality only — that he is, in fact, the result of Avidya
or Nescience. This is true. But this so-called relative
reality is again sufficient for all practical and religious
purposes. It is as real as anything, when known by us,
can be real. It is as real as anything that is called real
in ordinary language. The few only who have grasped
the reality of the One Absolute Being, have any right to
say that it is not absolutely real. The V edantist is very
careful to distinguish between two kinds of reality.
There is absolute reality which belongs to Brahman
only; there is phenomenal reality which belongs to
God or tsvara as Creator and to all which he created
as known to us; and there is besides, -what he
would call utter emptiness or sunyatva, -which with
the Buddhists represents the essence of the world, but
which the Vedantist classes with the mirage of the
desert, the horns of a hare, or the son of a barren
woman. Whenever he is asked whether he looks
upon the Creator and his works as not absolutely
real, he always falls back on this that the Creator and
the creation are the Absolute itself, only seeming to
be conditioned. The phenomenal attaches to their
appearance only, which translated into our language
would mean that we can know God only as He is
revealed in His works or as He appears to our human
understanding, but never in His absolute reality.
Only while with us the absence of knowledge is
subjective, with the Hindu it has become an objec-
tive power. He would say to the modern Agnostic :
We quite agree with you as far as facts are concerned,

THE TWO SCHOOLS OP THE VEDANTA, 321

but while you are satisfied with the mere statement
that we, as human beings, are nescient, we in India
have asked the further question, whence that Nescience,
or what has made us nescient, or what is the cause,
for a cause there must be, that we cannot know the
Absolute, such as it is. By calling that cause Avidylt
or Maya the Agnostics might say that the Vedantists
do not gain much ; still they gain this, that this uni-
versal A gnosis is recognised as a cause, and as dis-
tinct both from the subject, as knowing, and from the
objects, as known. We should probably say that the
cause of Agnosis or of our limited and conditional
knowledge lies in the subject, or in the very nature of
what we mean by knowledge, and it was from this very
point of view that Kant determined the limits and con--
ditions of knowledge as peculiar to the human mind.

Though by a different way, the Vedantist arrived
really in the end at the same result as Kant and more
recent philosophers who hold with Kant that £ our
experience supplies us only with modes of the Uncon-
ditioned as presented under the conditions of our con-
sciousness/ It is these conditions or limitations of
human consciousness which were expressed in India
by Avidy&. Sometimes this Avidya is represented as
a power within the Divine (devatma-sakti, Ved&nta-
sara, p. 4); sometimes, by a kind of mythological
metamorphosis, the Avidya or M&ya has become per-
sonified, a power, as it were, independent of ourselves,
yet determ inin g us in every act of sensuous Intuition
and rational conception. When the Vedantist says
that the relative reality of the world is vyavaharika,
that is practical or sufficient for all practical purposes,
we should probably say that ‘ though reality under the
(4) Y

322

LECTURE X.

forms of our consciousness is but a conditioned effect of
the absolute reality, yet this conditioned effect stands
in indissoluble relation with its unconditioned cause,
and being equally persistent with it, so long as the
conditions persist, is to consciousness supplying these
conditions, equally real.’

It may seem strange to find the results of the philo-
sophy of Kant and his followers thus anticipated under
varying expressions in the Upanishads and in the
Vedanta- philosophy of ancient India. The treatment
of these world-old problems differs no doubt in the
hands of modem and ancient thinkers, but the start-
ing-points are really the same, and the final results are
much the same. In these comparisons we cannot
expect the advantages which a really genealogical
treatment of religious and philosophical problems
yields us. We cannot go back by a continuous road
from Kant to Sankara, as if going back from pupil to
teacher, or even from antagonists to the authorities
which they criticise or attack. But when that treat-
ment is impossible, what I call the analogical treat-
ment is often very useful. As it is useful to compare
the popular legends and superstitious customs of
people who lived in Europe and Australia, and between
■whom no genealogical relationship is conceivable, it
is instructive also to watch the philosophical problems,
as they have been treated independently in different
times and in localities between which no intellectual
contact can possibly be suspected. At first no doubt
the language and the mothod of the Upanishads seom
so strange that any comparison with the philosophical
language and method of our hemisphere scorns out
of the question. It sounds strange to us when the

THE TWO SCHOOLS OE THE VEDANTA. 323

Upanishads speak of the soul emerging from the veins,
ascending to the moon, and after a long and danger-
ous journey approaching at last the throne of God ; it
sounds stranger still when the soul is made to say to
a personal God, £ I am what Thou art, Thou art the
Self, I am the Self, Thou art the True, I am the True.’
Yet it is only the old Eleatic argument carried out
consistently, that if there is but one .Infinite or one
God, the soul also can in its true essence be nothing
but God. Eeligions which are founded on a belief in
a transcendent yet personal God, naturally shrink
from this conclusion as irreverent and as almost im-
pious. Yet this is their own fault. They have first
created an unapproachable Deity, and they are
afterwards afraid to approach it ; they have made an
abyss between the human and the divine, and they
dare not cross it. This was not so in the early cen-
turies of Christianity. Eemembering the words of
Christ, ’Eycb kv avrois, /cat cri) kv kjjLoi, tva Sc nv rereX titofiivoi
et? €Vy c I in them and thou in me, that they be made
perfect in one/ Athanasius declared. Be Incarn . Verbi
Dei, 54, A vrbs (6 rod Oeov Xoyos) k7Trjv6p(o7rrjorev tva rjfjLeis
deoTTOL'qd^fxev, ‘He, the Logos or Word of God, became
man that we might become God.’ In more recent
times also similar ideas have found expression in
sacred poetry, though more or less veiled in meta-
phorical language. Not more than 200 years ago
there was that noble school of Christian Platonists
who rendered Cambridge famous in all Christendom.
They thought the same thoughts and used almost the
same language as the authors of the Upanishads 2000
years ago, and as the Indian Vedanta- philosophers
about 1000 years ago, nay as some solitary thinkers

324

LECTURE X.

to be found at Benares to the present day. The
following lines of Henry More might have been
written by a Vedanta-philosopher in India:

‘Hence the soul’s nature we may plainly see:

A beam it is of the Intellectual Sun.

A ray indeed of that Aeternity,

But such a ray as when it first out shone
From a free light its shining date begun.’

And again :

‘But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight,

Sing of Platoniek Faith in the first Good,

That faith that doth our souls to God unite
So strongly, tightly, that the rapid flood
Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud
Can stain, nor strike us off from th’ unity
Wherein we steadfast stand, unshaked, unmoved,
Engrafted by a deep vitality,

The prop and stay of things in God’s benignity/

The Vedanta-philosophy, as we saw, is very rich in
similes and metaphors, but no philosophy has at the
same time so courageously removed all metaphorical
veils, when the whole truth had to be revealed, as the
Ved&nta, particularly in the mouth of Sankara. And
what is peculiar to the Vedanta is that, with all its
boldness in speaking unmetaphorical language, it has
never ceased to be a religion.

The Ved&nta sanctioned a belief in Brahman as a
masculine, as an objective deity, or as an Isvara, the
Lord, the creator and ruler of the world. It went
even further and encouraged a worship of the Highest
Brahman under certain pratikas, that is, under cer-
tain names or forms or persons, nay even under the
names of popular deities. It prescribed certain means
of grace, and thereby introduced a system of moral
discipline, the absence of which in purely metaphysical
systems, is often urged as their most dangerous

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. 325

characteristic. The Vedantist would say that the
truly enlightened and released soul, after finding its
true home in Brahman, could not possibly commit sin
or even claim merit for its good deeds. We read
(BWh. Ar. IV. 4, 23), £ He who has found the trace or
the footstep (of Brahman) is not sullied by any evil
deed. 5 And again: ‘He that knows it, after having
become quiet, satisfied, patient, and collected, sees
self in Self, sees all as Self. Evil does not burn him,
he burns all evil. Free from evil, free from spots, free
from doubt, he becomes a true Brahmana, his self is
at rest in the Highest Self. 5

Moral Character of the Vedanta.

To guard against the dangers of self-deceit, the
Vedantists prescribe a very strict moral discipline as
the essential condition of the obtainment of the
highest knowledge. In the Upanishads (BWh. Ar. IV.
4, 22) we read : 6 Brahmans seek to know Him by the
study of the Veda, by sacrifice, by gifts, by penance,
by fasting, and he who knows Him becomes a sage.
Wishing for that world (of Brahman) only, they leave
their homes as mendicants. The people of old, know-
ing this, did not wish for offspring. What shall we
do with offspring, they said, we who have this Self
and are no longer of this world ? And having risen
above the desire for sons, wealth, and new worlds,
they wander about as mendicants. 5

Here you find again in the TJpanishad all the germs
of Buddhism. The recognised name of mendicant,
Bhikshu, is the name afterwards adopted by the
followers of Buddha.

The danger that liberty of the spirit might de-

326

LECTUEE X.

generate into licence, existed no doubt in India as
elsewhere. But nowhere were greater precautions
taken against it than in India. First of all there was
the probation, through which every youth had to pass
for years in the house of his spiritual teacher. Then
followed the life of the married man or householder,
strictly regulated by priestly control. And then only
when old age approached, began the time of spiritual
freedom, the life in the forest, which brought release
from ceremonial and religious restriction, but at the
same time, strict discipline, nay more than discipline,
penance of every kind, torture of the body, and strictly
regulated meditation.

Six requirements were considered essential before a
Brahman could hope to attain true knowledge, viz.
tranquillity (sama), taming of the passions (dama),
resignation (uparati), patience (titiksha), collection
(sam&dhi), and faith (sraddM). All these preparatory
stages are minutely described, and their object is
throughout to draw the thoughts away from things
external, and to produce a desire for spiritual freedom
(mumukshatva), and to open the eyes of the soul to
its true nature. It must be clearly understood that
all these means of grace, whether external, such as
sacrifice, study, penance, or internal, such as patience,
collection, and faith, cannot by themselves produce
true knowledge, but that they serve to prepare the
mind to receive that knowledge.

Ascetic Practices.

It is well known that in India the perfect absorp-
tion of thought into the supreme spirit is accompanied,
or rather preceded, by a number of more or less pain-

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. 327

ful practices, which are fully described in their ancient
catechisms (in the Yoga-sutras, &c.), and which con-
tinue to be practised to the present day in India. I
believe that from a pathological point of view there is
nothing mysterious in any of the strange effects pro-
duced by restraining or regulating the breathing,
fixing the eyes on certain points, sitting in peculiar
positions, and abstaining from food. But these things,
which have of late attracted so much attention, are of
small interest to the philosopher, and are apt to lead
to much self-deceit, if not to intentional deception.
The Hindus themselves are quite familiar with the
extraordinary performances of some of their Yogins
or so-called Mahatmas, and it is quite right that
medical men should carefully study this subject in
India, to find out what is true and what is not. To
represent these performances as essential parts of
ancient Hindu philosophy, as has lately been done by
the admirers of Tibetan Mahatmas, is a great mistake.

Esoteric Doctrines.

It is likewise a mistake to suppose that the ancient
Hindus looked upon the Upanishads or the Vedanta-
sutras as something secret or esoteric. Esoteric
mysteries seem to me much more of a modern inven-
tion than an ancient institution. The more we be-
come familar with the ancient literature of the East,
the less we find of Oriental mysteries, of esoteric
wisdom, of Isis veiled or unveiled. The profanum
vulgus , or the outsiders, if there were any, consisted
chiefly of those who wished to stay outside, or who
excluded themselves by deficiencies either of know-
ledge or of character. In Greece also no one was

328

LECTUBE X.

admitted to the schools of the Pythagoreans without
undergoing some kind of preparation. But to require
a qualifying examination is very different from ex-
clusiveness or concealment. The Pythagoreans had
different classes of students ; naturally, as we have
Bachelors and Masters of Arts ; and if some of these
were called eorcorepLKoC and others e^corepiKoC, that
meant no more at first than that the latter were still
on the outskirts of philosophical studies, while the
former had been admitted to the more advanced
classes. The Pythagoreans had even a distinctive
dress, they observed a restricted diet, and are said to
have abstained from flesh, except at sacrifices, from
fish, and from beans. Some observed celibacy, and
had all things in common. These regulations varied
at different times and in different countries where the
Pythagorean doctrines had spread. But nowhere do
we hear of any doctrines being withheld from those
who were willing to fulfil the conditions imposed on
all who desired admission to the brotherhood. If this
constitutes mystery or esoteric teaching, we might as
well speak of the mysteries of astronomy, because
people ignorant of mathematics are excluded from it,
or of the esoteric wisdom of the students of Compara-
tive Mythology, because a knowledge of Sanskrit is a
sine qua non . Even the Greek Mysteries, whatever
they became in the end, were originally no more than
rites and doctrines handed down at the solemn gather-
ings of certain families or clans or societies, where no
one had access but those who had acquired a right of
membership. It is true that such societies are apt to
degenerate into secret societies, and that limited ad-
mission soon becomes exclusiveness. Eut if outsiders

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. 329

imagined that these so-called mysteries contained any
profound wisdom and were meant to veil secrets
which it seemed dangerous to divulge, they were
probably as much deceived as people are in our days
if they imagine that doctrines of esoteric wisdom
have been handed down by the Freemasons from the
days of Solomon, and are now confided to the safe
keeping of the Prince of Wales.

It is quite true that the doctrine of the Upanishads
is called Rahasya, that is, secret, but it is secret in
one sense only, that is to say, no one was taught the
Upanishads in ancient times, w r ho had not passed
through the previous discipline of the two stages of
life, that of the student, and that of the householder,
or who had not decided from the first on leading a life of
study and chastity. This secrecy was easy when there
existed as yet no books, and when therefore those who
wished to study the Upanishads had to find a teacher
to teach them. Such a teacher would naturally com-
municate his knowledge to men only who had attained
the proper age, or had fulfilled other necessary condi-
tions. Thus we read at the end of the Samhit&-
Upanishad in the Aitareya-arawyaka , c Let no one tell
these Samhitas to any one who is not a resident
pupil, who has not been with his teacher at least one
year, and who is not himself to become an instructor.
Thus say the teachers.’ ^

As to the study of the Vedanta-sutras, I know of no
restriction, particularly at a time when MSS. had
become more widely accessible, and when numerous
commentaries and glosses enabled students to acquire
a knowledge of this system of philosophy even by
themselves. Nay, it is certainly curious that while

330

LECTURE X.

the ordinary education and the study of the Veda
was restxicted to the three upper classes, we read again
and again of members of the fourth class, mere Sudras,
sharing the knowledge of the Vedanta, and joining
the rank of the mendicants or Bhikshus.

Difference 'between India and Greece.

What constitutes, however, the most important dif-
ference between the ancient V edanta-philosophy in
India, and similar philosophies in Greece, is the theo-
logical character retained by the former, while the
latter tended more and more to become ethical and
political rather than theological. With regard to
metaphysical speculations the Eleatic philosophers,
Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus, come
nearest to the V ed&nta-philosophers. Xenophanes
may still he called almost entirely theological. He
speaks of Zeus as the Supreme Being, as all in all.
In fact, he represents the same stage of thought which
is represented as the lower knowledge in the Vedanta,
a belief in Brahman, as masculine, which, to judge from
the Upaniskads themselves, was in India also earlier
than a belief in Brahman as neuter. This belief left
the individual soul face to face with the universal,
but objective deity, it had not yet reached to the
knowledge of the oneness of the Atman and the Brah-
man. Xenophanes retains his belief in Zeus, though
his Zeus is very different from the Zeus of Homer.
He is first of all the only God, neither in form nor in
thought like unto mortals. Thus Xenophanes argues :

4 If God is the strongest of all things, he must be one,
for if there were two or more, he would not be the
strongest and best of all things.’

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDANTA. 331

(Et h 9 ecrnv 6 debs dirdvrcav Kpanarrov, eva (prfcrlv avrov
7rpoo-7]K€Lv eTvai 0 el yap bvo rj TrXeCovs etev ovk av er i Kpdri-
(ttov Kal fieXrio-Tov avrov elvai ttclvt^v. Clem. Strom, v.
601 c.)

He must also be immoveable and unchangeable
(a kivtjtos or aparinata). And again :

6 He revolves everything in his mind without effort. 5

(’AAV cvndvevQe ttovolo voov cppevl rravra KpabaCvei.
Simpl. Phys. 6 a, m.)

c He is altogether mind and thought, and eternal/

(2t?/xiraz;ra r elvai {rov 6eov) vovv Kal <pp6vrj(nv Kal
aib iov. Diog. ix. 19.)

‘He sees altogether, he thinks altogether, he hears
altogether/

(Ovkos opa, ov kos be voel, ovkos be r aKovei.)

So far Xenophanes is still theological. He has not
gone beyond the conception of Brahman, as the
supreme and only Being; his Zeus is still a mascu-
line, and a personal deity.

In some of the utterances, however, that are ascribed
to Xenophanes, he goes beyond. Plato at least
ascribes to Xenophanes as well as to his successors,
the philosophical tenet that all things are many in
name, but in nature one 1 , which reminds one strongly
of the Sat, or to ov, of the Upanishads, that becomes
manifold by name and form. Cicero, however (Acad,
ii. 37, 118), states clearly that Xenophanes took this
one to be God.

(Xenophanes unum esse omnia neque id esse muta-
bile et id esse Deum, neque natum unquam et sempi-
ternum.)

Even the argument which we found in the Upani-
1 Sophist, 242 5.

832

LECTUKE X*

shads, that what is cannot have sprung from what is
not, is ascribed to Xenophanes also, who calls this
One and All, which truly exists, unborn, unchange-
able, imperishable, eternal, — all attributes that could
easily be matched in the Upanishads. Like the
Upanishads, Xenophanes insists on the One and All
being intelligent (/caitanya, A oyt/coV), the only doubtful
point being whether Xenophanes went so far as his
successors in surrendering altogether its divine or
Zeus-like character. According to Sextus (Hyp, Pyrrh.
i. 225) it would seem that this was not the case.
‘Xenophanes/ he writes, ‘held that the All was one
and that God was congenital (avpLcpvijs) with all things/
or, as we should say, that God was immanent in the
world. That Xenophanes conceived of this Being as
crcpcupozibrjs, or spherical, is well known, but it hardly
conveys any definite meaning to our mind ; and you
will find that ancient as well as modern authorities
are by no means agreed as to whether Xenophanes
considered the world as limited or unlimited 1 .

What is preserved to us of the physical philosophy
of Xenophanes seems to be quite apart from his meta-
physical principles. For while from his metaphysical
point of view all was one, uniform and unchangeable,
from his physical point of view he is said to have
considered earth, or earth and water, as the origin of
all things (eK yalrjs yap rtavra , Kal els yrjv ir&vra re\evrq y
Fragm. 8), ‘All things are from the earth, and all
things end in the earth ; ’ and rr&vres yap yalrjs re Kal
H/daros iKyevopiecrda , Sext. Emp. adv. Math. ix. 361, and
yrj Kal vboop rravO’ oWa yivovrai rjbe (pvovrai , Simpl.
Phys. fol. 41 a.

1 Zeller, Pie Philosophic der Griechen , i. pp. 457-8.

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE YEDAKTA.

833

‘Earth and water are all things, whatever is horn
or grows/

Xenophanes is also credited with the statement that
the earth arose from air and fire — theories which again
might easily be matched in the TJpanishads. But the
essential point on which Xenophanes and the Upani-
shads agree is the first conception of the One Being,
as the substance of everything, though that concep-
tion has not yet become purely metaphysical, but is,
like the Brahman in the older TJpanishads, still sur-
rounded by a kind of religious halo.

On this point Parmenides marks a decided advance
in the Eleatic school, the same advance which we
observed in the later TJpanishads. With him the
concept of the One Being has become entirely meta-
physical. It is no longer God, in the ordinary sense
of the word, as little as the Highest Brahman is God,
though whatever there is real in God, is the Highest
Brahman. In the definition and description of this
One Being, Parmenides goes even beyond the Vedanta,
and we see here once more how the dialectic flexibility
of the Greek mind outstrips the dogmatic positiveness
of the Hindu mind. According to Parmenides, what
is, is; what is not, can neither be conceived nor
enunciated. What is, cannot have a beginning or
an end 1 . It is whole, unique, unmoved and at rest.
We cannot say that it was or will be, but only that it

1 Cf. Simplicius, Phys. fol. 31 a, b : M ovos 5’ er/ pvdos oSoto A elver at,
ws eariv. ravTrj $ 5 enl GTjpar* eaca IToXXd jx aX’, wsr dy£vi)rov eov Kal avw-
XeOpov eanv , OdXav povvoyeves re teal arpeph draXavrov * Ov nor erjv
ovo* effrai, enel vvv eanv apod nav, ^we^es. riva yap yevvav SiQrjcreai
avrov; II 77 nSdey avgrjQev ; ovr * he pi) e6vros edcat &ao6ai a’ ovZl voetv'
oil yap (pardv ov5e voijtSv *E artv oncos ovk eon, ri S’ av puv kclI XP* os
wpaev, "Tarepoy $ npoaO’ e/c rod pr)f>evb$ apfcapevov (pvv ; Ourcoy 7) ndpnav
ireXepev xpedtv \onv 77 ovtcL

334

LECTURE X.

is, for how could it have become anything hut itself?
Not from not being, for that is not, and cannot bring
forth ; nor from being, for this would never bring forth
anything but itself. And this ov cannot have parts,
for there is nothing different from it by which its
parts could be separated. All space is filled by it,
and it is there immoveable, always in the same place,
by itself and like itself. Nor is thinking different
from being 1 , because there is nothing but being, and
thinking is thinking of being. It is curious that
Parmenides will not have this Being to be infinite,
because he looks even upon infinity as something im-
perfect, because not having definite limits. In fact, this
Real Being of Parmenides is by no means immaterial ;
we can best explain it by the simile we met with in
the Upanishads, that all that is made of clay, is clay,
differing only by name and form. Parmenides does not
deny that these forms and names exist in the pheno-
menal world, he only insists on the uncertainty of the
evidence which the senses offer us of these forms and
names. And as in the Upanishads this erroneous
knowledge or nescience is sometimes called tamas
or darkness, as opposed to the light (te^/as) of true
knowledge, we find that Parmenides also speaks of
darkness (vvg abarjs) as the cause of erroneous, and of
light (alOipiov tt vp) as the cause of true knowledge.

We thus see how the level of thought reached by
the earlier Eleatics, is much the same as that of the
earlier Upanishads. They both start from religious
ideas, and, end in metaphysical conceptions, they both
have arrived at the highest abstraction of ro oz>, the

1 To ivrbv S' karl vouv re ml ovveniv e<rn v6r)p,a } &c. Simplicius,
Phys. ff. 19 a, 31 a, b.

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE VEDiXTA. 335

Sk. Sat, as the only reality; they both have learnt
to look upon the manifold of experience as doubtful,
as phenomenal, if not erroneous, and as the result of
name and form (jj.op<pas ovojxa^ iv, namarupa). But
the differences between the two are considerable also.
The Eleatic philosophers are Greeks with a strong
belief in personal individuality. They tell us little
about the soul, ani its relation to the One Being, still
less do they suggest any means by which the soul
could become one with it, and recognise its original
identity with it. There are some passages (Zeller,
p. 488) in which it seems as if Parmenides had be-
lieved in a migration of souls, but this idea does not
assume with him the importance which it had, for
instance, among the Pythagoreans. The psychological
questions are thrown into the background by the
metaphysical problems, which the Eleatic philosophers
wished to solve, while in the Upanishads the psycho-
logical question is always the more prominent.

LECTURE XI.
sufiism.

Religion, System of Relations between Man and God.

I ALLUDED in a former lecture to a definition of
religion which, we owe to Newman. £ What is
religion,’ he writes ( Univ . Serm.> p. 19), ‘but the sys-
tem of relations between me and a Supreme Being.’
Another thoughtful writer has expressed the same idea,
even more powerfully. ‘Man requires,’ he said, ‘that
there shall be direct relations between the created and
the Creator, and that in these relations he shall find
a solution of the perplexities of existence V

This relationship, however, assumes very different
forms in different religions. We have seen how in
the Vedanta it was founded on a very simple, but
irrefragable syllogism. If there is one being, the Ve-
d&ntist says, which is all in all, then our soul cannot
in its substance be different from that being, and our
separation from it can be the result of nescience only,
which nescience has to be removed by knowledge,
that is, by the Ved&nta-philosophy.

We saw in the Eleatic philosophy of Greece, the
same premiss, though without the conclusion deduced
from it, that the soul cannot form an exception, but
1 Disraeli in Lothair, p. 157.

SUFIISM.

337

must, like everything else, if not more than every-
thing else, share the essence of what alone is infinite,
and can alone be said truly to exist.

STLfiism, its Origin.

We shall next have to consider a religion in which
the premiss seems to be wanting, but the conclusion
has become even more powerful, I mean the Sufiism
among the Mohammedans.

As the principal literature of Sufiism is composed
in Persian, it was supposed by Sylvestre de Sacy and
others that these ideas of the union of the soul with
God had reached Persia from India, and spread from
thence to other Mohammedan countries. Much may
be said in support of such a theory, which was shared
by Goethe also in his West-Ostlicher Divan. We
know of the close contact between India and Persia
at all times, and it cannot be denied that the tempera-
ment and the culture of Persia lent itself far more
naturally to the fervour of this religious poetry than
the stem character of Mohammed and his immediate
followers. Still we cannot treat Sufiism as genealo-
gically descended from Ved&ntism, because Veclant-
ism goes far beyond the point reached by Sufiism,
and has a far broader metaphysical foundation than
the religious poetry of Persia. Sufiism is satisfied
with an approach of the soul to God, or with a loving
union of the two, but it has not reached the point
from which the nature of God and soul is seen to be
one and the same. In the language of the Ved&nta,
at least in its final development, we can hardly speak
any longer of a relation between the soul and the
Supreme Being, or of an approach of the soul to, or of
G) Z

338

LECTURE XI.

a union of the soul with God. The two are one
as soon as their original and eternal oneness of
nature has been recognised. With the Sufis, on the
contrary, the subject, the human soul, and the
object, the divine spirit, however close their union,
remain always distinct, though related beings. There
are occasional expressions which come very near to
the Vedanta similes, such as that of the drop of water
being lost in the ocean. Still; even these expressions
admit of explanation ; for we are told that the drop
of water is not lost or annihilated, it is only received,
and the Persian poet when he speaks of the soul being
lost in God need not have meant more than our own
poet when he speaks of our losing ourselves in the
ocean of God’s love.

Tholuck seems to have been one of the first to show
that there is no historical evidence for the supposition
that Sufiism is founded on an ancient Persian sect,
prior to the rise of Islam. Sufiism, as he has proved,
is decidedly Mohammedan in origin, and its first
manifestations appear early in the second century of
the Hedjra.

Mohammed said indeed in the Kor&n 1 , c In Islam
there is no monachism* ; but as early as 623 A. D., forty-
five men of Mekka joined themselves to as many
others of Medina, took an oath of fidelity to the
doctrines of the prophet and formed a fraternity, to
establish community of property, and to perform daily
certain religious practices by way of penitence. They
took the name of $ufi, a word that has been derived
from sfif, wool, a hair-cloth used by penitents in the

1 See the ’Awarifid-Ma’arif, translated by Lient.-Col. H.Wilberforee
Clarke, 1891, p. 1.

sun ism. 339

early days of Islam, or from sufiy, wise, pious, or from
safi, pure, or from safa, purity.

Abstract of Sufi Doctrines.

The principal doctrines of Sufiism have been summed
up by Sir W. Jones as follows 1 : ‘The Sufis believe
that the souls of men differ infinitely in degree , but
not at all in hind, from the divine spirit of which
they are particles , and in which they will ultimately
be absorbed; that the spirit of God pervades the
universe, always immediately present to His work,
and consequently always in substance ; that He alone
is perfect in benevolence, perfect truth, perfect beauty ;
that love of Him alone is real and genuine love, while
that for other objects is absurd and illusory ; that the
beauties of nature are faint resemblances, like images
in a mirror, of the divine charms ; that, from eternity
without beginning to eternity without end. the supreme
benevolence is occupied in bestowing happiness, or
the means of attaining it ; that men can only attain
it by performing their part of the personal covenant
between them and the Creator ; that nothing has a
pure absolute existence but mind or spirit ; that
material substances , as the ignorant call them, are no
more than gay pictures presented continually to our
minds by the sempiternal artist ; that we must beware
of attachment to such phantoms and attach ourselves
exclusively to God, who truly exists in us, as we
exist solely in Him; that we retain even in this
forlorn state of separation from our Beloved, the idea
of heavenly beauty and the remembrance of our
primeval voivs ; that sweet musick, gentle breezes,

1 Sir W. Jones, Works 3 1807, vol. iv. p. 212.

340

LECTURE XI.

fragrant flowers, perpetually renew the primary idea ,
refresh our fading memory, and melt us with tender
affections ; that we must cherish these affections, and
by abstracting our souls from vanity , that is from all
but God, approximate to this essence, in our final
union with which will consist our supreme beatitude. 5

Babia, tine earliest Sufi.

It is curious that the first person quoted as express-
ing Sufi opinions is a woman of the name of Rabia,
who died 135 after the Hedjra. Ibn Khalikan tells a
number of stories of her: £ She would often in the
middle of the night go on the roof of the house and
call out in her solitude : “ 0 my God, the noise of the
day is hushed, the lover dallies with the beloved in
the secret chamber; but I in my solitude rejoice in
thee, for I know thee to be my true beloved.” 5 Ferid
eddin Attar tells of the same Rabia, that once when
she was walking across the rocks, she cried out:
c Desire of God has seized me ; true thou art stone also
and earth, but I yearn to see thee. 5 Then the High
God spoke directly in her heart : 4 0 Rabia, hast thou
not heard that when Moses once desired to see God,
only a mote of the Divine Majesty fell on a mountain,
and yet it burst asunder. Be content therefore with
my name. 5

Again, we are told that when Rabia came to Mekka
on a pilgrimage, she exclaimed, c I want the Lord of
the Kaaba, what use is the Kaaba to me? I have
come so near to God, that the word He has spoken
applies to me : Whoever approaches me a span, I ap-
proach him a yard. 5

There are ever so many stories about this Rabia,

SUFIISJL

341

all intended to show her devotion, nay, her spiritual
union with Allah. When she was asked to get mar-
ried, she said : c My inmost being is married, therefore
I say, that my being has perished within me, and has
been resuscitated in God. Since then, I am entirely
in His power, nay, I am all Himself. He who wishes
for me as his bride, must ask not me, but Him. 5 When
Hassan Basri (a famous theologian) asked her by what
way and by what means she had risen to that height,
she answered : ‘ By losing everything that I had found,
in Him/ And when asked once more, by what way
and by what means she had come to know Him, she
exclaimed : ‘ 0 Hassan, thou knowest by certain ways
and by certain means; I know without ways and
means/ When she was ill and laid up, three great
theologians visited her. One, Hassan Basri, said : ‘ He
is not sincere in his prayers, who does not bear
patiently the castigation of the Lord/ The other,
Shakik by name, said: ‘He is not sincere in his
prayers, who does not rejoice in His castigation/ But
Rabia, still perceiving something of the self in all
this, replied : ‘ He is not sincere in his prayers, who,
when he sees the Lord, does not forget that he is
being chastised/

Another time when she was very ill, and was asked
the cause of her illness, she said : ‘ I have been think-
ing of the joys of paradise, therefore my Lord has
punished me/ And again she said : c A wound within
my heart devours me; it cannot be healed except
through my union with my friend. I shall remain
ailing, till I have gained my end on the last day/

This is language with which students of the lives
of Christian Saints are familiar. It often becomes

342

LECTURE XI.

even more fervid both in the East and in the West,
but it sounds to our ears less offensive in the East
than in the West, because in Eastern languages the
symbolic representation of human love as an emblem of
divine love, has been accepted and tolerated from very
early times.

But though it is impossible to trace the first begin-
nings of Sufiism directly to a Persian source, it cannot
be denied that in later times Persia and even India,
particularly after they had been brought under Mo-
hammedan sway, contributed largely to the develop-
ment of Sufiism and of Sufi poetry.

Connection of Sufiism with. Early Christianity.

The chief impulse, however, which Sufiism received
from without, seems to have come from Christianity in
that form in which it was best known in the East. By
the end of the third century, as Mr. Whinfield writes
in the Preface to his translation of the Mesnevi, por-
tions of Plato, of Aristotle, ‘the parent of heresies/ and
of the Alexandrian commentators had been translated
into Arabic. The theosophy of the Neo-platonists
and Gnostics was widely spread in the East. Sufiism
might almost be called a parallel stream of mystical
theosophy derived in part from Plato, ‘the Attic
Moses/ as he was called, but mainly from Christianity,
as presented in the spiritual gospel of St. John, and
as expounded by the Christian Platonists and Gnostics.
Traces of the influence of Platonism have been dis-
covered in the reference of the Sufis to the One and
the Many, the figment of Not-being, the generation
of opposites from opposites, the Alexandrian gnosis of
the Logos, of ecstasy and intuition, and the doctrine

SUFIISM.

343

propounded in the Phaedrus, that human beauty is
the bridge of communication between the world of
sense and the world of ideas, leading man by the
stimulus of love to the Great Ocean of the Beautiful.

Traces of Christianity have been pointed out by
Mr. Whinfield, not only in the distinct mention of the
chief events of the Gospel history, but in actual
renderings of sentences and phrases taken from the
Gospels. The cardinal Sufi terms, £ The Truth,’ s The
Way/ £ Universal Reason’ (Logos), ‘Universal Soul'
(Pneuma), c Grace’ (Fais), and £ Love/ are all treated
by him as of Christian extraction.

Mr. Whinfield might in support of his theory have
mentioned a poem in the Gulshen Ras, the secret of
the bed of roses, a very popular but anonymous poem
on the principles of Sufiism written about the begin-
ning of the fourteenth century, in which the mystic
union of the soul with God is described as the es-
sential feature of Christianity.

There we read : —

‘Dost thou know what Christianity is? I shall tell it thee.

It digs up thy own Ego, and carries thee to God.

Thy soul is a monastery, wherein dwells oneness,

Thou art Jerusalem, where the Eternal is enthroned ;

The Holy Spirit works this miracle, for know that God's being
Rests in the Holy Spirit as in His own spirit.

The Spirit of God gives to thy spirit the fire of the spirit,

He moves in thy spirit beneath a thin veil ;

If thou art delivered by the Spirit from manhood,

Thou hast found eternal rest in the sanctuaxy of God ;

He who has directed himself so that all passions are silent,
Will surely, like Jesus, ascend to heaven/

Abu Said Abul Cheir, Founder of Sufiism.

Rabia may be called a Sufi before even the rise of
Sufiism. Her Sufiism seems quite her own, without
any traces of foreign influence. The real founder,

LECTUBE XI.

344

however, of the Sufis as a religious sect was Abu
Said Abul Cheir, about 820 a. d.

Atm Yasid and Junaid.

Towards the end of the same century a schism
took place, one party following Abu Yasid al-Bu-
shani, whose pantheistic views were in open conflict
with the Kor&n, the other following Junaid, who tried
to reconcile Sufiism with orthodoxy. There were
then, as at present, Sufis and Sufis. Some wrote in
Persian, such as SenM, Ferid eddin Att&r, JellM eddin
Rumi (d. 1162), Jam! (d. 1172); others in Arabic,
such as Omar ibn el Faridh, and Izz eddin Mutaddesi,
others even in Turkish.

Some of their poetry is magnificent in imagery,
and highly valued even by those who are afraid of
the consequences of their doctrines. Sufiism was
said to breed an alarming familiarity with the deity,
and a disregard of human and divine ordinances, at
least among those who have not reached the highest
spiritual purity, and might be tempted to use their
outward sanctity as a cloak for human frailty.

Sufi, Pakir, Darwish.

The etymology of Sufi, as derived from sfif wool,
because they walked about dressed in white woollen
garments is now generally accepted 1 . Formerly it was
supposed that Sufi came from the Greek crcxfios, which is
impossible. At present the Sufis are generally known as
Fakirs , in Persian as Farwish , i. e. poor. Formerly they
were also called AHfi theosophist, and ATil alyakyn , the
people of surety. Thus one of them, Abd al Razzak,

1 Sprenger, i. p. 262.

SUFIISM.

845

says: c All praise to Allah, who by His grace and
favour has saved us from the researches of conven-
tional sciences, who by the spirit of immediate in-
tuition has lifted us above the tediousness of tradition
and demonstration, who has removed us from the
hollow threshing of straw, and kept us pure from
disputation, opposition and contradiction ; for all this
is the arena of uncertainty and the field of doubt,
of error, and heresy ; glory to Him who has taken
away from our eyes the veil of externals, of form, and
confusion. 3

Asceticism.

The Sufis trust to the inward eye that is opened
in raptures ; and which, if it is weak or blind, can
^be helped on by ascetic discipline. This ascetic
discipline was originally no more than abstaining
from food and drink, and other pleasures of life.
But it soon degenerated into wild fanaticism. Some
of the Fakirs indulged in violent exercises intended
to produce convulsions, cataleptic fits, and all the
rest. The Darwishes, who may be seen now turning
round and round till they break out in delirious
shouts, are the degraded descendants of the Sufis.
Att&r and Jellal edclin Rumi, like true lovers of
God, required no stimulants for their enthusiasm,
and their poetical genius found utterance, not in
inarticulate ravings, but in enraptured hymns of
praise. The true Sufis were always honoured, not
only for their genius, but for their saint-like lives,
and they could well bear comparison with their
contemporaries in the West, even such as St.
Bernard.

346

LECTURE XI.

When speaking of the true and saint-like Sufis,
Jelled eddin says: —

* Faithful they are, but not for Paradise,

God's Will the only crowning of their faith :

And not for seething Hell flee they from sin,

But that their will must serve the Will divine.

It is no struggle, 'tis not discipline
Wins them a will so restful and so blest ;

It is that God from His heart -fountain core
Pills up their jubilant soul.'

It is true there is little of what we call theosophic
philosophy in their utterances. That belongs almost
exclusively to the Ved&ntist, and to a certain extent
to the Yogins also of India. The Sufi trusts to his
feelings, nay, almost to his senses, not, as the Vedantist,
to his philosophical insight. He has intuitions or
beatific visions of God, or he claims at least to have
them. He feels the presence of God, and his highest
blessedness on earth is the mystic union with God, of
which he speaks under ever- varying, and sometimes,
to us at least, startling imagery. Yet for his highest
raptures he too confesses that human language has
no adequate expression. As S&dy says, the flowers
which a lover of God had gathered in his rose-garden,
and which he wished to give to his friends, so over-
powered his mind by their fragrance, that they fell
out of his lap and withered ; that is to say, the glory
of ecstatic visions pales and fades away when it has
to be put into human language. *

The Mesnevi.

JeMl eddin in the Preface to his Mesnevi, says:
c This book contains strange and rare narratives,
beautiful sayings, and recondite indications, a path

SUFIISM.

for the devout, and a garden for the pious, short
in expressions, numerous in its applications. It
contains the roots of the roots of the roots of the
Faith, and treats of the mysteries of union and
sure knowledge . 5 This book is looked upon by
Mohammedans as second only to the Koran, and
yet it would be difficult to imagine two books more
different one from the other.

Mohammed’s Opinion.

Mohammed’s idea of God is after all the same as
that of the Old Testament. Allah is chiefly the God
of Power; a transcendent, but a strongly personal
God. He is to be feared rather than to be approached,
and true religion is submission to His will (Islam).
Even some of the Sufis seem to shrink from asserting
the perfect oneness of the human and the divine natures.
They call the soul divine, God-like, but not yet God ;
as if in this case the adjective could really be dis-
tinguished from the substantive, as if anything could
be divine but God alone, and as if there could be
even a likeness of God, or anything God-like, that
was not in its essence God. Philosophical specu-
lations on God were distasteful to Mohammed.
4 Think on the mercies of God/ he says in one place,
4 not on the essence of God . 5 He knew that theo-
logical speculation would inevitably lead to schism.
4 My people shall be divided/ he says, 4 into three and
seventy sects, of which all save one shall have their
portion in the fire/ That one with Mohammed would
certainly not have been that of the Sufis.

There is an interesting poem in which Said, the
servant, first recounts one morning an ecstasy he had

348

LECTUBE XI.

enjoyed, and is then warned by Mohammed against
excessive fervour :

Said speaks :

1 My tongue clave fever-dry, my blood ran fire,

My nights were sleepless with consuming love,

Till night and day sped past, as flies a lance,

Grazing a buckler's rim ; a hundred thousand years
No longer than a moment. In that hour
All past eternity and all to come
Was gathei'ed up in one stupendous Now, —

Let understanding marvel as it may,

Where men see clouds, on the ninth heaven I gaze,

And see the throne of God. All heaven and hell
Are bare to me and all men's destinies.

The heavens and earth, they vanish at my glance,

The dead rise at my look. I tear the veil
From all the worlds, and in the hall of heaven
I set me central, radiant as the sun.

Then spake the Prophet (Mohammed), Friend, thy steed is
warm ;

Spur him no more. The mirror in thy heart
Bid slip its fleshly case, now put it up —

Hide it once more, or thou wilt come to harm/

There are long systematic treatises on Sufiism, but
they refer chiefly to outward things, not to the great
problems of the true nature of the soul and of God,
and of the intimate relation between the two. We
read of four stages through which the Sufi has to
pass.

The Four Stages.

First comes the stage of humility, or simple
obedience to the law and its representative, the
Shaikh (n&sut or shariat); then follows the way
(tarikat), that is, spiritual adoration and resig-
nation to the Divine Will; then J Ar£tf, or Marifat,
Knowledge, that is, inspired knowledge; and lastly
Kakikat, that is, Truth, or complete effacement
in God. #

SUFIISM.

349

The Poetical Inanguage of Sufism.

When we read some of the Sufi enraptured poetry,
we must remember that the Sufi poets use a number
of expressions which have a recognised meaning
in their language. Thus sleep signifies meditation ;
perfume , hope of divine favour ; gales are illapses of
grace ; kisses and embraces, the raptures of piety.
Idolators are not infidels, but really men of the pure
faith, but who look upon Allah as a transcendent
being, as a mere creator and ruler of the world.
Wine is forbidden by Mohammed, but with the Sufi
wine means spiritual knowledge, the wine-seller is
the spiritual guide, the tavern the cell where the
searcher after truth becomes intoxicated with the wine
of divine love. Mirths intoxication , and wantonness
stand for religious ecstasy and perfect abstraction
from all mundane thoughts. Beauty is the perfection
of Deity; tresses are the expansion of His glory; the
lips of the beloved mean the inscrutable mysteries of
His essence; the down on the cheeks stands for the
world of spirits ; a black mole for the point of
indivisible unity.

When we read some of this enraptured Sufi poetry
we are at first somew T hat doubtful whether it should
not be taken simply in its natural sense, as jovial
and erotic ; and there are some students of literature
who will not admit a deeper meaning. It is well
known that Emerson rebelled against the idea of
seeing more in the songs of Hafiz than what there is
on the surface, — delight in women, in song and love.
‘We do not wish/ he writes 1 , ‘to make mystical

Works , 1882, vol. iv. p. 201.

350

LECTURE XI.

divinity out of the Songs of Solomon, much less
out of the erotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz.
Hafiz himself is determined to defy all such hypo-
critical interpretation, and tears off his turban and
throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and
throws his glass after the turban. Nothing is too
high, nothing too low, for his occasion. Love is
a leveller, and Allah becomes a groom, and heaven a
closet, in his daring hymns to his mistress or to
his cupbearer. This boundless charter is the right
of genius/ So it is, and there are no doubt many
poems in which Hafiz means no more than what he
says. No one would search for any but the most
obvious meaning in such Anacreontic verses as the
following :

‘ Wine two years old and a damsel of fourteen are
sufficient society for me, above all companions, great
and small/

4 How delightful is dancing to lively notes and the
cheerful melody of the flutes, especially when we
touch the hand of a beautiful girl ! 5

4 Call for wine, and scatter flowers around: what
more canst thou ask from fate? Thus spake the
nightingale this morning: what sayest thou, sweet
rose, to his precepts ? 5

‘Bring thou a couch to the garden of roses, that
thou mayest kiss the cheeks and lips of lovely
damsels, quaff rich wine, and smell odoriferous
blossoms/

But no one acquainted with the East, would doubt that
some kind of half-erotic, half-mystic poetry, was a
recognised style of poetry among Mohammedans, was
tolerated and admired alike by laity and clergy. Nor

SUFIISM.

351

was the mystic meaning a mere afterthought, forced
into the poetry of the Sufis, but it was meant to be
there from the first.

At first the perfume of such poetry has something
sickening to us, even when we know its true meaning.
But the Sufi holds that there is nothing in human
language that can express the love between the soul
and God so well as the love between man and woman,
and that if he is to speak of the union between
the two at all, he can only do so in the symbolic
language of earthly love.

We must not forget that if earthly love has in the
vulgar mind been often degraded into mere animal
passion, it still remains in its purest sense the highest
mystery of our existence, the most perfect blessing
and delight on earth, and at the same time the truest
pledge of our more than human nature. To be able
to feel the same unselfish devotion for the Deity
which the human heart is capable of, if filled with
love for another human soul, is something that may
well be called the best religion. It is after all the
Christian command, ‘ Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy might/ If once we understand this, then
no one can claim to come nearer to the highest
Christian ideal than the true Sufi, whose religion
is a burning love of God, whose life is passed in
the constant presence of God, and whose every act
is dictated by love of God.

Barrow, no mean theologian, and in no way tainted
by religious sentimentalism, speaks in language which
might have been used by the most fervent Sufi poets.

‘ Love/ he writes, £ is the sweetest and most delectable

352

LECTUEE XI.

of all passions ; and when by the conduct of wisdom
it is directed in a rational way toward a worthy,
congruous, and attainable object, it cannot otherwise
than fill the heart with ravishing delight : such, in all
respects superlatively such, is God; who infinitely
beyond all other things deserveth our affection, as
most perfectly amiable and desirable. He is the most
proper object of our love; for we chiefly were framed,
and it is the prime law of our nature, to love Him ;
our soul, from its original instinct, vergeth towards
Him as its centre, and can have no rest till it be
fixed on Him. He alone can satisfy the vast capacity
of our minds, and fill our boundless desires. He, of
all lovely things, most certainly and easily may be
attained ; for, whereas commonly men are crossed in
their affection, and their love is' embittered from
things imaginary, which they cannot reach, or coy
things, which disdain and reject them, it is with God
quite otherwise : He is most ready to impart Himself ;
He most earnestly desireth and wooeth our love ; He
is not only most willing to correspond in affection,
but even doth prevent us therein: He doth cherish
and encourage our love by sweetest influences and
most consoling embraces ; by kindest expressions of
favour, by most beneficial returns ; and whereas all
other objects do in the enjoyment much fail our
expectation, He doth ever far exceed it. Wherefore
in all affectionate motions of our hearts toward
God; in desiring Him, or seeking His favour and
friendship ; in embracing Him, or setting our esteem,
our good will, our confidence on Him; in enjoying
Him by devotional meditations and addresses to Him ;
in a reflective sense of our interest and propriety in

SUFIISM.

353

Him ; in that mysterious union of spirit, whereby we
do closely adhere to, and are, as it were, invested in
Him ; in a hearty complacence in His benignity,
a grateful sense of His kindness, and a zealous
desire of yielding some requital for it, we cannot but
feel very pleasant transports: indeed, that celestial
flame, kindled in our hearts by the spirit of love,
cannot be void of warmth ; we cannot fix our eyes
upon infinite beauty, we cannot taste infinite sweet-
ness, we cannot cleave to infinite felicity, without
also perpetually rejoicing in the first daughter of Love
to God, Charity toward men; which in complection
and careful disposition, doth much resemble her
mother ; for she doth rid us from all those gloomy,
keen, turbulent imaginations and passions, which
cloud our mind, which fret our heart, w r hieh discom-
pose the frame of the soul ; from burning anger, from
storming contention, from gnawing envy, from rank-
ling spite, from racking suspicion, from distracting
ambition and avarice ; and consequently doth settle
our mind in an even temper, in a sedate humour, in
an harmonious order, in that pleasant state of tran-
quillity, which naturally doth result from the voidance
of irregular passions . 5

I have given the whole of this long passage, because,
as Sir William Jones has pointed out, it differs from
the mystical theology of the Sufis and Yogis no more
than the flowers and fruits of Europe differ in scent
and flavour from those of Asia, or as European differs
from Asiatic eloquence. ‘ The same strain , 5 he writes,
‘in poetical measure, would rise to the odes of
Spenser on Divine Love and Beauty , and, in a higher
key with richer embellishments, to the song of Hafiz
(4) A a

854

LECTUEE XI.

and Jayadeva, the raptures of the Mesnevi, and the
mysteries of the Bhagavata/

Morality of Sufi ism.

The Sufi’s belief that he who is led by love is no
longer subject to the outward law is by no means so
outrageous as it has been represented. It does not
mean that the true Sufi claims any licence for himself,
it only means that he whose heart is filled with love
of God and who never loses sight of God, can think
no longer of the outward law, but is led in all his acts
by the love of God only, claiming no merit for his
good works, and feeling quite incapable of committing
any act displeasing to God.

Extracts from Sufi Poets.

I shall now read you a few extracts from Sufi poets,
translated by Sir William Jones : —

c In eternity without beginning, a ray of thy beauty began
to gleam; when Love sprang into being, and east flames
over all nature.

£ On that day thy cheek sparkled even under thy veil, and
all this beautiful imagery appeared on the mirror of our
fancies.

4 Eise, my soul, that I may pour thee forth on the penci]
of that supreme Artist, who comprised in a turn of His
compass all this wonderful scenery.

4 From the moment when I heard the divine sentence,
44 1 have breathed into man a portion of my Spirit/’ I was
assured that we were His, and He ours.

‘Where are the glad tidings of union with thee, that
I may abandon all desire of life % I am a bird of holiness,
and would fain escape from the net of this world.

SUFIISM.

S55

4 Shed, 0 Lord, from the cloud of heavenly guidance, one
cheering shower, before the moment when I must rise up
like a particle of dry dust.

4 The sum of our transactions on this universe is nothing :
bring us the wine of devotion; for the possessions of this
world vanish.

e The true object of heart and soul is the glory of union
with our beloved : that object really exists, but without it
both heart and soul would have no existence.

4 0 the bliss of the day, when I shall depart from this
desolate mansion; shall seek rest for my soul; and shall
follow the traces of my beloved ;

£ Dancing, with love of His beauty, like a mote in a
sunbeam, till I reach the spring and fountain of light,
whence yon sun derives all his lustre."

The next extract is from Jellal eddin Rumi’s Mes-
nevi, as translated by Mr. E. H. Whinfield. J ellal eddin
thus describes the perfect union with God : —

A loved one said to her lover to try him,

Early one morning ; 4 O such a one, son of such a one,

I marvel whether you hold me more dear,

Or yourself; tell me truly, O ardent lover ! *

He answered: 4 1 am so entirely absorbed in you,

That I am full of you from head to foot.

Of my own existence nothing but the name remains,

In my being is nothing besides you, 0 object of my desire.
Therefore am I thus lost in you,

Just as vinegar is absorbed in honey;

Or as a stone, which has been changed into a pure ruby,
Is filled with the bright light of the sun.

In that stone its own properties abide not,

It is filled with the sun’s properties altogether;

So that, if afterwards it holds itself dear,

A a 2

356

LECTURE XI.

*Tis the same as holding the sun dear, 0 beloved !

And if it hold the sun dear in its heart,

'Tis clearly the same as holding itself dear.

Whether that pure ruby hold itself dear,

Or hold the sun dear,

There is no difference between the two preferences;

On either hand is naught but the light of dawn.

But till that stone becomes a ruby it hates itself,

For till it becomes one “I,” it is two separate “I's,”

For ’tis then darkened and purblind,

And darkness is the essential enemy of light.

If it then hold itself dear, it is an infidel ;

Because that self is an opponent of the mighty sun.
Wherefore ’tis unlawful for the stone then to say “I,”
Because it is entirely in darkness and nothingness.’
Pharaoh said, 4 1 am the Truth,’ and was laid low.
Mansur Hallaj said, 4 1 am the Truth/ and escaped free.
Pharaoh’s c I ’ was followed by the curse of God ;

Mansurs 4 1 7 was followed by the mercy of God, 0 beloved !
Because Pharaoh was a stone, Mansur a ruby;

Pharaoh an enemy of light, Mansur a friend.

0 prattler, Mansur s £ I am He 7 was a deep mystic saying,
Expressing oneness with the light, not mere incarnation.

This poetical image of the Sun is often applied to
the Deity by Sufi poets. Thus Jell&l eddin says : —

Hone but the sun can display the sun,

If you would see it displayed, turn not away from it.
Shadows, indeed, may indicate the sun’s presence,

But only the sun displays the light of life.

Shadows induce slumber, like evening talks,

But when the sun arises the 4 moon is split asunder.’

In the world there is naught so wondrous as the sun,
But the Sun of the soul sets not and has no yesterday.

SUFIISM.

357

Though the material sun is unique and single,

We can conceive similar suns like to it.

But the Sun of the soul, beyond this firmament, —

No like thereof is seen in concrete or abstract.

Where is there room in conception for His essence,

So that similitudes of Him should be conceivable?

Sometimes the soul is called the mirror of God.
Thus Jellal eddin says: —

If a mirror reflects not, of what use is it?

Knowest thou why thy mirror reflects not?

Because the rust has not been scoured from its face.

If it were purified from all rust and defilement,

It would reflect the shining of the Sun of God.

Often the Sufi poet warns against self-deceit : —

Whoso is restricted to religious raptures is hut a man ;
Sometimes his rapture is excessive, sometimes deficient.
The Sufi is, as it were, the ‘ son of the season/

But the pure (Silfi) is exalted above season and state.
Beligious raptures depend on feelings and will,

But the pure one is regenerated by the breath of Jesus.
You are a lover of your own raptures, not of me;

You turn to me only in hope of experiencing raptures.
Whoso is now defective, now perfect,

Is not adored by Abraham; he is ‘one that sets/

Because the stars set, and are now up, now down,

He loved them not; ( I love not them that set/

Whoso is now pleasing and now unpleasing
Is at one time water, at another fire.

He may he the house of the moon, hut not the true
moon ;

Or as the picture of a mistress, but not the living one.
The mere Sufi is the f child of the season ; *

358

LECTUEE XI.

He clings to seasons as to a father,

But the pure one is drowned in overwhelming love.

A child of any one is never free from season and state.
The pure one is drowned in the light ‘ that is not begotten/
‘What begets not and is not begotten ' is God.

Go I seek such love as this, if you are alive ;

If not, you are enslaved by varying seasons.

Gaze not on your own pictures, fair or ugly,

Gaze on your love and the object of your desire.

Gaze not at the sight of your own weakness or vileness,
Gaze at the object of your desire, 0 exalted one.

The next extract is from J&mi’s Salaman and
Absab as translated by Fitzgerald, the same Fitz-
gerald to whom Browning was so cruel. Jami
ascribes all earthly beauty and all earthly love to
the Divine presence in it. Without that Divine light
man would see no real beauty, would know no real
love.

Salaman and Absab, by JImi.

O Thou, whose Spirit through this universe
In which Thou dost involve Thyself diffused,

Shall so perchance irradiate human clay
That men, suddenly dazzled, lose themselves
In ecstasy before a mortal shrine
Whose light is but a shade of the Divine ;

Not till Thy secret beauty through the cheek
Of Laila smite, doth she inflame Majnun ;

And not till Thou have kindled Shirin’s eyes,

The hearts" of those two rivals swell with blood.

For lov'd and lover are not but by Thee,

Nor beauty; — mortal beauty but the veil
Thy Heavenly hides behind, and from itself
Feeds, and our hearts yearn after as a bride

SUFIISM.

359

That glances past us veil’d — "but ever so

That none the veil from what it hides may know.

How long wilt Thou continue thus the world

To cozen with the fantom of a veil

From which Thou only peepest? I would be

Thy Lover, and Thine only — I, mine eyes

Seal’d in the light of Thee to all but Thee,

Yea, in the revelation of Thyself
Lost to myself, and all that self is not
Within the double world that is but one.

Thou lurkest under all the forms of thought,

Under the form of all created things ;

Look where I may, still nothing I discern
But Thee throughout this universe, wherein
Thyself Thou dost reflect, and through those eyes
Of him whom Man Thou madest, scrutinise.

To thy Harfm, Dividuality

Ho entrance finds — no word of This and That;

Do Thou my separate and derived self

Make one with Thy Essential 1 Leave me room

On that Div&n which leaves no room for twain ;

Lest, like the simple Arab in the tale,

I grow perplext, oh God! ’twixt ‘Me’ and ‘Thee’;

If I — this Spirit that inspires me whence?

If Thou — then what this sensual impotence ?

We see here the same temper of mind for which the
Christian poet prays when he says, 4 Let all do all as
in Thy sight.*’ Sufiism, short of its extravagances,
may almost be called Christian ; nor do I doubt that
it owed its deepest impulses to Christianity, more
particularly to that spiritual Christianity which was
founded on Platonist and Neo-Platonist philosophy.
We saw that the Sufis themselves do not deny

360

LECTURE XI.

this: on the contrary, they appeal to Jesus or Isa
as their highest authority, they constantly use the
language of the New Testament, and refer to the
legends of the Old. If Christianity and Mohammedan-
ism are ever to join hands in carrying out the high
objects at which they are both aiming, Sufiism would
be the common ground on which they could best
meet each other, understand each other, and help
each other.

LECTURE XII.

THE LOGOS.

Religion a Bridge between the Visible and Invisible.

TT may be truly said that the founders of the
religions of the world have all been bridge-
builders. As soon as the existence of a Beyond, of a
Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and
beneath us had been recognised, a great gulf seemed
to be fixed between what was called by various
names, the earthly and the heavenly, the material and
the spiritual, the phenomenal and noumenal, or best of
all, the visible and invisible world (oparos and av -
oparos ), and it was the chief object of religion to unite
these two worlds again, whether by the arches of
hope and fear, or by the iron chains of logical syl-
logisms 1 .

1 A writer in the Christian Register, July 16, 1891, p. 461. expresses
the same thoughts when he says : ‘At the bottom of all religions
is man's instinct of his relationship with the Infinite ; and this
will not be weakened, but on the contrary will be made stronger
and firmer from age to age, as the survey of the career of the race
gives man wider and wider experience, and enables him more and
more clearly to interpret his history, and see it as a consistent
■whole, under the rule of invariable law. Religion therefore is
something above or beyond any form in which it has ever ap-
peared, and Christianity is a distinctive, yet natural step in an
unfolding process, not a supernatural form projected into human
life from without, and not yet absolute religion/

362

LECTtTKE XII.

This problem of uniting the invisible and the
visible worlds presented itself under three principal
aspects. The first was the problem of creation, or
how the invisible Primal Cause could ever come in
contact with visible matter and impart to it form
and meaning. The second problem was the relation
between God and the individual soul. • The third
problem was the return of the soul from the visible to
the invisible world, from the prison of its mortal
body to the freedom of a heavenly paradise. It is this
third problem which has chiefly occupied us in the
present course of lectures, but it is difficult to separate
it altogether from the first and the second. The in-
dividual soul as dwelling in a material body forms
part of the created world, and the question of the
return of the soul to God is therefore closely con-
nected with that of its creation by, or its emanation
from God.

We saw while treating of the last problem and
examining the solutions which it had received that
most of the religions and philosophies of the ancient
world were satisfied with the idea of the individual
soul approaching nearer and nearer to God and
retaining its terrestrial individuality face to face with
an objective deity. There was one religion only, or
one religious philosophy, that of the Ved&nta, which,
resting on the firm conviction that the human soul
could never have been separate from the Divine Soul,
looked upon a return or an approach of the soul to
God as a metaphor only, while it placed the highest
happiness of the soul in the discovery and recovery
of its true nature as from eternity to eternity one with
God. This contrast was most clearly shown in

THE LOGOS.

363

Sufiism as compared with Yedantism. The Sufi with
all his burning love of God conceives the soul as
soaring upward, as longing like a lover for a nearer
and nearer approach to God, and as lost at last in
ecstatic raptures when enjoying the beatific vision.
The Vedantist on the contrary, after having once con-
vinced himself by rigorous logic, that there can be but
one Divine Substance, which he calls the Self or Atman,
and that his human self cannot be anything different in
its essence from the true and universal Self, from that
which was and is and .is to be, all in all, is satisfied
with having by means of rigorous reasoning recovered
his true self in the highest Self, and thus having
found rest in Brahman. He knows no raptures, no
passionate love for the Deity, nor does he wait for
death to deliver his soul from its bodily prison, but
he trusts to knowledge, the highest knowledge, as
strong enough to deliver his soul from all nescience
and illusion even in this life. It is true that some of
the Sufis also come sometimes very near to this point,
as when Jellal eddin says : ' The “ I am He ” is a deep
mystic saying, expressing oneness with the Light, not
mere incarnation . 5 Still in general the oneness which
is the highest good of the Sufi, is union of two, not
the denial of the possibility of real separation.

There are religions in which there seems to be no
place at all either for an approach of the individual
soul to God, or for its finding itself again in God.
Buddhism, in its original form, knows of no objective
Deity, of nothing to which the subjective soul could
approach or with which it could be united. If we
can speak of Deity at all in Buddhism, it would
reside in the Buddha, that is in the awakened soul,

364

LECTORE XII.

conscious of its true eternal nature, and enlightened
by self-knowledge. But that self-knowledge was no
longer the Vedanta knowledge of the Atman, or, if it
was so originally, it had ceased to be so in that
Buddhism which is represented to us in the sacred
books of that religion.

In Judaism, on the contrary, the concept of the
Deity is so strongly marked, so objective, so ma-
jestic, and so transcendent, that an approach to or a
union with Jehovah would have been considered
almost as an insult to Deity. There seem to be
some reminiscences in the Old Testament of an
earlier belief in a closer relationship between God
and man, but they never point to a philosophical
belief in the original oneness of the Divine and the
human soul, nor could they possibly have led on to
the concept of the Word as the Son of God. In the
mythological religions of classical antiquity also there
was little room for a union between human and divine
nature. The character of the Greek and Boman gods
is so intensely personal and dramatic that it excludes
the possibility of a human soul becoming united with
or absorbed in any one of them. The highest privilege
that some specially favoured persons might have aspired
to consisted in being admitted to the society of the
Olympians. But here too we may catch some earlier
reminiscences, for it is well known that some of the
old poets and philosophers of Greece declared their
belief that gods and men came from the same source,
that the gods were immortal mortals, and men mortal
immortals \

1 B.eracliti Reliquiae , ed. Bywater, No. LVIII, ’A O&varoi Ovqrot,
QvijToi aOavaToi, £i vvtgs tov kfceivuv davarov , rov 8e bctivwv piovreOvewres.

THE LOGOS.

365

But though a belief in the eternal oneness of what
we call human and divine breaks out here and there
yet it is in the Yedanta religion only that it has
received its full recognition and development. It
has been reasoned out there without any of those
metaphorical disguises which we find in other re-
ligions. One of the most familiar meta/phors is that
which expresses the essential oneness of the Divine
and the human natures under the veil of fatherhood
and sonship. Human language could hardly have
supplied a better metaphor for expressing intrinsic
oneness and extrinsic difference, yet we know to how
much legend and mythology this metaphor has given
rise. No metaphor can be perfect, but the weak
point in our metaphor is that every human father is
himself created, while we require a name for a power
that begets, but is itself unbegotten. We must not
suppose that whoever speaks of God as a Father or
of men as the sons of God, expresses thereby a belief
in the oneness of the Divine and human nature. That
fatherhood of God may be found in almost every
religion, and means no more than a belief in the
fatherly goodness of God. Moses means no more
than that when he says : 4 Ye are the children of the
Lord your God’ (Deut. xiv. 1) ; or when he speaks
of "the Rock that begat thee, and God that formed
thee’ (Deut. xxxii. 18); or when he asks 2 , £ Is not he

1 The famous Chinese inscription of the year 133 a.d., discovered
lately in the valley of the Orkhon, begins with the following
words : i 0 Heaven so blue ! there is nothing that is not sheltered
by Thee. Heaven and men are united together, and the universe is
one (homogeneous).’ See Gr. Scklegel, La Stele Funeraire du Teghin
Giogh, 1892.

2 I must remark once for all that when I quote Moses and other
reputed authors of Old Testament Books, I simply follow custom,

366

LECTURE XII.

thy father that has bought thee ? hath he not made thee,
and established thee?' (Dent. xxxii. 6). These ideas
are not the historical antecedents of that belief in the
Fatherhood of God and the Divine Sonship of Christ
as the Word of God which pervades the Fourth Gospel.
Abraham, who in the Old Testament is simply called
the Friend of God, is spoken of by later Jews such as
Philo, as through his goodness an only son 1 , while in
one passage of the New Testament Adam is singled
out as the son of God. But all this belongs to quite
a different sphere of thought from that in which the
Stoics moved, and after them Philo, and the author
of the Fourth Gospel, and Christ Himself. With
them the Son of God was the Word of God, and the
Word of God as incarnate in Jesus.

The Oriental Influences In Early Christianity.

You cannot have listened to what the ancient
Ved&nta philosophers of India and the more recent
Sufis of Persia had to say about the Deity and its
true relation to humanity, without having been struck
by a number of similarities between these Oriental
religions and the beliefs which we hold ourselves, or
which were held by some of the most ancient and
most eminent Fathers of the Church. So striking
are some of these similarities, particularly with regard
to the relation of the transcendent Deity to the phe-
nomenal world and to the individual soul, that for
a time it was taken almost for granted that Eastern

without expressing any opinion on the results of critical scholarship.
Surely we may be allowed to speak of Homer, without committing
ourselves to the opinion that he wrote all the books of the Iliad
and Odyssey.

1 Ytyov&s danoLijrbs avra> fxovos vl6s, Philo, De Sobrxet., 11 (1,401).

THE LOGOS-

367

influences had told on the minds of the early Fathers
of the Church. Even Daehne, in his JDantcIIung tier
Judisch- Alexandrin ischen Rel igion spMlosopltl e, has
not quite discarded that opinion. But though at
present, after a more careful study of the Vedanta
and Sufi philosophy, the number of similarities has
become even larger than before, the idea of a direct
influence of Indian or Persian thought on early
Christian religion and philosophy, has been surrendered
by most scholars.

Borrowing 1 of Beliglous Tlioiig-lits.

The difficulty of admitting any borrowing on the
part of one religion from another is much greater
than is commonly supposed, and if it has taken place,
there seems to me only one way in which it can be
satisfactorily established, namely by the actual occur-
rence of foreign words, or possibly the translations
of foreign terms which retain a certain unidiomatic
appearance in the language to which they have been
transferred. It seems impossible that any religious
community should have adopted the fundamental
principles of religion from another, unless their inter-
course was intimate and continuous — in fact, unless
they could freely exchange their thoughts in a com-
mon language. And in that case the people who
borrowed thought, could hardly have helped borrow-
ing words also. We see this whenever less civilised
nations are raised to a higher level of civilisation and
converted to a higher religion ; and the same thing
happens, though in a lesser degree, when there has
been a mutual exchange of religious thought between
civilised races also. The language of Polynesian

368

LECTUKE XII.

converts is full of English, terms. The language even
_of a civilised country like China, after it had been
converted to Buddhism, abounds with corrupt Sanskrit
words. Even the religious language of Borne, after
if had been brought for the first time under the influ-
ence of Greece, shows clear traces of its indebtedness.
We find no such traces in the language of the early
Christians. All the elements of their religious and
philosophical terminology are either Greek or Jewish.
Even the Jews, who had such frequent intercourse
with other nations, and during the Alexandrian period
borrowed so largely from their Greek instructors,
betray hardly any religious imports from other Ori-
ental countries in their religious and philosophical
dictionary. At an earlier time, also, the traces of
borrowing on the part of the Jews, whether from
Babylonians or Persians, are, as we saw, very few
and faint in Hebrew. No doubt neighbomdng nations
may borrow many things from each other, but the
idea that they steal, or borrow silently and dis-
honestly, has little to support it in the history of the
world. Least of all do they carry off the very corner-
stones of their religion and philosophy from a foreign
quarry. It would have been utterly impossible, for
instance, for the early Christian Fathers to disguise
or deny their indebtedness to the Old Testament or
to Greek philosophy. No one has ever doubted it.
But it is very different with Indian and Persian in-
fluences. The possibility of some highly educated
Persians or even Indians living at Alexandria at or
even before the time of the rise of Christianity cannot
be disproved, but that Philo or Clement should have
been the ungrateful and dishonest pupils of Indian

THE LOGOS.

369

Pandits, Buddhist Bhikshus, of Persian Mobeds, is
more than, in the present state of our knowledge, any
serious student of the history of human thought could
possibly admit.

Nor should we forget that most religions have a
feeling of hostility towards other religions, and that
they are not likely to borrow from others which in
their most important and fundamental doctrines
they consider erroneous. It has often been supposed
that the early Christians borrowed many things from
the Buddhists, and there are no doubt startling coin-
cidences between the legendary life-stories of Buddha
and Christ. But if we consider that Buddhism
is without a belief in God, and that the most vital
doctrine of Christianity is the fatherhood of God
and the sonship of man, we shall find it difficult to
believe that the Christians should have taken pride
in transferring to the Son of God any details from
the biography of an atheistical teacher, or in ac-
cepting a few of his doctrines, while abhorring and
rejecting the rest.

There is still another difficulty in accepting the
opinion that certain religions borrowed from each
other. A more careful, historical study of the re-
ligions and philosophies of antiquity has enabled us
to watch the natural and continuous growth of each
of them. When we have learnt to understand how
religions and philosophies which at first startled us by
their similarities, have each had their own indepen-
dent and uninterrupted development, we cease to look
for foreign influences or intrusions, because we know
that there is really no room for them. If, for
instance, we take the Vedanta philosophy, we can
(4) ' Bb

370

LECTUBE XIL

trace its growth step by step from the hymns to
the Br&hmanas, the Upanishads, the Sutras, and
their commentaries, and no one who has once under-
stood that unbroken growth would dream of ad-
mitting any extraneous influences. The conception of
death as a mere change of habitat, the recognition of
the substantial identity of the human and the Divine
Spirit, and the admission of true immortality as based
entirely on knowledge, and as possible even without
the intervention of physical death — all these are
intellectual articles of faith which, however different
from the primitive religion of the Indian Aryas, are
nevertheless the natural outcome of the Indian mind,
left to itself to brood from generation to generation
over the problems of life and eternity. If then we
find traces of the same or very similar articles of
faith in the latest phase of Judaism, as represented
by Philo, and again in the earliest phases of Chris-
tianity, as represented by St. Clement, and other
Hellenistic converts to Christianity, we must first
of all ask the question, Can we account for the
philosophical opinions of Philo who was a Jew, and
of Clement who was a Christian, as the natural
outcome of well-known historical antecedents, and,
if so, is there any necessity, nay is there any possi-
bility for admitting extraneous impulses, coming
either from India or Persia, from Buddhism or
Manicheism ?

PMlo and Ms Allegorical Interpretation.

Let us begin with Philo, and ask the question
whether we cannot fully account for his philosophy
as the natural outcome of the circumstances of his

THE LOGOS.

371

life. It is going too far to call Philo a Father of
the Church, but it is perfectly true that the Christi-
anity of Clement and Origen and other Fathers of
the Church owes much of its metaphysical ground-
work and its philosophical phraseology to that Jewish
school of Alexandria of which Philo is only one,
though the best-known representative. Some of the
early Fathers were no doubt under the more im-
mediate influence of Greek philosophy, but others
came under its sway after it had been filtered through
the minds of Jewish philosophers, such as Philo, and
of Jewish converts in Egypt and Palestine.

Philo was the true child of his time, and we must try
to understand his religious philosophy as the natural
outcome of the circumstances in which the old Jewish
religion found itself, when placed face to face with
Greek philosophy. Philo’s mind was saturated with
Greek philosophy, so that, as Suidas informs us, it
had become a common saying that either Plato
Philonizes or Philo Platonizes. It is curious to
observe 1 that each party, the Greeks and the Jews, and
later on, the Christians also, instead of being pleased
with the fact that their own opinions had been adopted
by others, complained of plagiarism and were most
anxious to establish each their own claim to priority.
Even so enlightened and learned a man as St. Clement
of Alexandria writes : £ They have borrowed from
our books the chief doctrines they hold on faith
and knowledge and science, on hope and love and
repentance, on temperance and the fear of God*
(Strom, ii. 1). These complaints, coming from Clement,

1 See Hatch, Hibbert Lectures , pp. 250 seq. Tertulliani Apolo-
geticus, ed. Bindley, cap. xlvii, note 9.

B b s

372

LECTUKE XII.

may be regarded as well founded. But it is different
with men like Minucius Felix on one side and Celsus
on the other. These are both eager partisans. When
Minucius Felix says that the Greek philosophers
imitated the shadow of half-truths from the divine
preaching of the Jewish prophets, one wonders
whether he thought that Aristotle had studied Isaiah.
And when Celsus says that the Christian philosophers
were simply weaving a web of misunderstandings of
the old doctrine, and sounded them forth with a loud
trumpet before men, like hierophants round those
who are being initiated in mysteries, did he really
wish us to believe that the Apostles, and more par-
ticularly the author of the Fourth Gospel, had studied
the principal writings of Plato and Aristotle? One
thing, however, is made quite clear by their squabbles,
natnely that Judaism, Christianity, and Greek philo-
sophy were fighting against each other on terms
of perfect equality, and that they had all three to
appeal to the judgment of the world, and of a world
brought up almost entirely in the schools of Stoics
and Neo-Platonists. Thus it was said of Origen that
in his manner of life he was a Christian, but in his
opinions about God, a Greek (Euseb. H. E ., vi. 19).
Justin Martyr goes so far as to say in a somewhat
offended and querulous tone : ‘ We teach the same
as the Greeks, yet we alone are hated for what we
teach’ (Apol. i. 20). The same Justin Martyr speaks
almost like a Greek philosopher when he protests
against anthropomorphic expressions. c You are not
to think,’ he writes, ‘ that the unbegotten God came
down from anywhere or went up. . . . He who is
uncontained by space and by the whole world, does

THE LOGOS.

373

not move, seeing that he was born before the world
was born.’ In another place he says (Apol. ii. 13):
‘The teachings of Plato are not alien to those of
Christ, though not in all respects similar .... for all
the writers (of antiquity 7 ) were able to have a dim
vision of realities by means of the indwelling seed
of the implanted word ’ (the Logos).

Synesius, 3!79-431.

Even so late as the fourth century, and after the
Council of Nieaea, we meet with a curious instance of
this mixture of Christian faith with Greek philosophy
in a bishop, whose name may be familiar to manv
from Kingsley’s splendid novel, Hypatia. Bishop
Synesius (born about 370 a. d.) had actually been an
attendant on Hypatia’s lectures. Bishop though he
was, he represents himself in his writings as very fond
of hounds and horses, of hunting and fighting. But he
was likewise an ardent student of Greek philosophy,
and it is very interesting to watch the struggles be-
tween his religion and his philosophy, as he lays them
bare in letters to his friends. He was evidently made
a bishop, Bishop of Ptolemais, very much against his
will, and he sees no reason why, even in his episcopal
office, he should part with his horses and hounds.
But not only that, but he declares that he cannot part
with his philosophical convictions either, even where
they clashed with Christianity. He confesses that he
was by education a heathen, by profession a philoso-
pher, and that if his duty as a bishop should be any
hindrance to his philosophy, he would relinquish his
diocese, abjure his orders, and remove into Greece. He
seems, however, to have quieted his scruples, and to

374

LECTURE XII.

have remained in office, keeping his Greek philosophy
to himself, which, as he says, would do no good to the
people at large, and suffering them to live in the pre-
judices which they had imbibed, whatever that may
mean.

If this wavering Christianity was possible in a
bishop, and even after the Council of Nicaea, 325, we
may imagine what it was in the first and the second
centuries, when people who had been brought up on
Greek philosophy persuaded themselves for the first
time to join the Church of the Christians.

In trying to represent the important process which
in the East, and more particularly at Alexandria, had
brought the religious thoughts of the Semitic world
face to face with the philosophical thoughts of Greece,
I have allowed myself to anticipate what properly
belongs to my next lectures. There can be no doubt,
however, that this process of intellectual amalgama-
tion between East and West, which we see still at
work in the fourth century, took its origin much earlier,
and chiefly in that school of Jewish thinkers who are
represented to us in Philo. He must always remain to
us the chief representative of a whole phase of Jewish
thought, because though he himself appeals to former
teachers, their works have not been preserved 1 . We
should not attribute too much to Philo’s personality,
powerful though it was. On the contrary, we should
try to understand the Philonic phase of Judaism as the
natural result of the dispersion of the Jews over the
whole civilised world, over c Assyria, Egypt, Pathros,
Cush, Elam, Shinar and the islands of the sea,’ and of
their contact with the best thoughts of these countries.

1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 6.

THE LOGOS.

375

Like most o£ his fellow-exiles, Philo remained a firm
believer in the Old Testament. He is first a Jew, and
then a philosopher, though the Jew has to make many
concessions in learning to speak and think in the
language of Greek philosophy. Philo's position, after
his acquaintance with Greek philosophy, reminds one
often of that of Rammohun Roy, who was a firm
believer in the Veda, when suddenly brought face to
face with the doctrines of Christianity. He could not
help being ashamed of many things that were found
in the sacred books of India, just as, according to
Celsus, Jews and Christians were really ashamed of
their Bible \ He had therefore to surrender many of
the effete traditions of his old faith, but he tried to
interpret others in the light received from Christian
literature, till at last he formulated to himself a new
concept of the Deity and of mans relation to the
Deity which seemed to be in harmony both with the
intentions of Indian sages and with the aspirations of
Christian teachers. The touchstone of truth which
he adopted was much the same as that which Philo
had adopted from Plato 2 , that nothing unworthy of
the deity should be accepted as true, however sacred
the authority on which it might rest. When this was
once admitted everything else followed. Philo, with
all his reverence for the Old Testament, nay, as he
would say, on account of that very reverence, did not
hesitate to call it ‘great and incurable silliness’ to
suppose that God really planted fruit-trees in Para-
dise. In another place Philo says that to speak of

1 Bigg, Christian Platonists , p. 147.

2 Bigg, Christian Platonists , p. 51. Philo, Be Sacrificio Ab. et

Caini, xxviii. p. 181. We find the same in Clement, Horn. H. 40,
■nav 7 patyev Kara rod $eov kcrnv.

376

LECTURE XII.

God repenting, is impiety greater than any that was
drowned in the Flood 1 . The interpretation which he
put on these and similar passages is of much the same
character as that which is now put by educated
natives of India on the hideous worship of the goddess
Durg& ( Anthropolog . Religion , p. 160). Yet, however
implausible such interpretations may seem to us, they
show at all events a respect for truth and a belief
in divine holiness. Neither Philo, nor Clement, nor
Origen could bring themselves to accept physical or
moral impossibilities as simply miraculous 2 . Believing
as they did in a Logos or Reason that ruled the world,
everything irrational became ipso facto impossible, or
had to be interpreted allegorically. When we con-
sider how powerful a philosophical thinker Philo
was, some of his allegorical interpretations seem
almost incredible, as when he explains that Adam
was really meant for the innate perceptive faculty of
the mind, and Eve for the same in its operative
character, which springs subsequently into being, as
the helper and ally of the mind. In the same way
Abel , according to Philo, stands for perishableness,
Cain for self-conceit and arrogance, Seth for irrigation,
Enos for hope, Henoch for improvement, Noah for
justice, Abraham for instruction, Isaac for spiritual
delight. In all this Philo is perfectly serious and
firmly convinced of the truth of his interpretations.
And why ? Because, as he says again and again, £ no
one could believe such stories as that a woman was
made out of a man’s rib.’ ‘ Clearly, 5 he says, ‘ rib stands
for power, as when we say that a man has ribs instead

1 See Philo, Quod Deus immutabilis , 1. 275.

2 Bigg, Christian Platonists , p. 137.

THE LOGOS.

377

of strength, or that a man is thick-ribhed. Adam
then must represent the mind, Eve perception already
acting through the senses, and the rib the permanent
faculty still dormant in the mind/ Even thus we
must admire in Philo the spirit that is willing, though
the flesh is weak.

These allegorical interpretations had become in-
evitable with Philo, as they had before with some of
the more enlightened Greek philosophers, where we
find them as early as Democritus, Anaxagoras, and as
very popular with the Stoics, the immediate teachers
of Philo. Whenever sacred traditions or sacred
books have been invested by human beings with a
superhuman authority, so that all they contain has to
be accepted as the truth and nothing but the truth,
what remains but either to call what is unworthy
of the deity miraculous, or to resort to allegory? Nor
are Philo’s allegories, though they are out of place,
without their own profound meaning. I shall quote
one only, which contains really an excellent abstract
of his doctrine. When speaking of the Cherubim
who were placed, with a flaming sword that turned
every way, to guard the approaches of the tree of life,
Philo, after quoting some other attempts at interpre-
tation, proceeds to say : ‘ I once heard even a more
solemn word from my soul, accustomed often to be
possessed by God and prophesy about things which
it knew not; which, if I can, I will recall to the
mind and mention. Now, it said to me, that in the
one really existing God the supreme and primary-
powers are two, goodness and authority, and that by
goodness he has generated the universe, and by
authority he rules over what was generated ; and that

378

LECTURE XII.

a third thing in the midst, which brings these two
together, is Reason (Logos), for that by Reason God
is possessed both of rule and of good. '(It said) that
of rule, therefore, and of goodness, these two powers
the Cherubim are symbols, and of Reason the flaming
sword ; for Reason is a thing most swift in its motions
and hot, and especially that of the Cause, because it
anticipated and passed by everything, being both
conceived before all things and appearing in all
things V

So far we can follow. But when Philo proceeds
to make an application of his interpretation of the
Flaming Sword as the symbol of reason in the story
of Abraham and Isaac, and explains that Abraham
when he began to measure all things by God, and to
leave nothing to that which is generated, took c fire
and knife 5 as an imitation of the Flaming Sword,
earnestly desiring to destroy and burn up the mortal
from himself in order that with naked intellect he
might soar aloft to God, we have to hold our breath
in utter amazement at so much folly united in the
same mind with so much wisdom !

What is important for us, however, is to see that
Philo, who is generally represented as almost unin-
telligible, becomes perfectly intelligible if we once
know his antecedents and his surroundings. If,
as some scholars supposed, Philo had really been
under the immediate influence of Eastern teachers,
whether Persian or Indian, we should be able to
discover some traces of Persian or Indian thought.
Nay, if Philo had commanded a larger view of the
religions of the world, it is not improbable that his
1 See Dr. James Drummond, Philo Judaeus, vol. i. p. 21.

THE LOGOS.

379

eyes would have been opened, and that he might have
learnt the same lesson which a comparative study of
ancient religions has taught us, namely, that mytho-
logical language is inevitable in the early stages of
religious thought, and that, if we want to understand
it, we must try to become children rather than philo-
sophers. In one case Philo boldly declares that the
story of the creation of Eve, as given in the Old
Testament, is simply mythological 1 .

These preliminary remarks seemed to me necessary
before approaching the problem with which we are
more immediately concerned, namely, how the gulf
that was fixed in the Jewish mind between heaven and
earth, between God and man, could be bridged over.
We saw that with Philo the concept of the Deity,
though it often retained the name of Jehovah, had be-
come quite as abstract and transcendent as that of the
only true Being, to ovrm 6v, of Greek philosophers. It
would not seem likely therefore that the Greek philo-
sophers, from whom Philo had learnt his thoughts and
language, could have supplied him with a bond to unite
the visible with the invisible world. And yet so it
was 2 . For after all, the Greek philosophers also had
found that they had raised their Supreme Being or
their First Cause so very high, and placed it so far
beyond the limits of this visible world and the horizon
of human thought, that unless some connecting links
could be found, the world might as well be left with-
out any cause and without any Supreme Being.

1 To firjrov hfi rovro fxv&whis kart (Legis allegor. i. 70).

3 Bigg, l.c., p. 259 note; Drummond, l.c., ii. p. 170.

380

LECTUKE XIX.

XaOg*OS.

This connecting link, this bond between the world
and its cause, between the soul and its God, was to
Philo’s mind the Logos .

Let us lay hold at once on this word. Logos is
a Greek word embodying a Greek thought, a thought
which has its antecedents in Aristotle, in Plato ; nay,
the deepest roots of which have been traced back
as far as the ancient philosophies of Anaxagoras and
Heraclitus. This Greek word, whatever meaning was
assigned to it by Christian thinkers, tells us in lan-
guage that cannot be mistaken that it is a word and
a thought of Greek workmanship. Whoever used it,
and in whatever sense he used it, he had been under
the influence of Greek thought, he was an intellectual
descendant of Plato, Aristotle, or of the Stoics and
Neo-Platonists, nay of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus.
To imagine that either Jews or Christians could adopt
a foreign terminology without adopting the thoughts
imbedded in it, shows a strange misapprehension of the
nature of language. If, as we are told, certain savage
tribes have no numerals beyond four, and afterwards
adopt the numerals of their neighbours, can they
borrow a name for five without borrowing at the
same time the concept of five? Why do we use a
foreign word if not because we feel that the word and
the exact thought which it expresses are absent from
our own intellectual armoury?

Philo had not only borrowed the Greek language in
which he wrote, he had borrowed Greek thought also
that had been coined in the intellectual mint of Greece,
and the metal of which had been extracted from Greek
ore. No doubt he used his loan for his own purposes,

THE LOGOS.

381

still he could only transfer the Greek words to concepts
that were more or less equivalent. If we see such names
as Parliament or Upper and Lower House transferred to
Japan, and used there either in a translated or in their
original form to signify their own political assemblies,
we know that however different the proceedings of the
Japanese Parliament may be from those of the English
Parliament, the very concept of a Parliament would
never have been realised in Japan except for its
prototype in England. Besides, we see at once that
this word, Parliament, and what it signifies, has no
historical antecedents in Japan, while in England it
has grown from a small seed to a magnificent tree.
It is the same with Logos. There may have been
some vague and faint antecedents of the Logos in the
Old Testament 1 , but the Logos which Philo adopted
had its historical antecedents in Greece and in Greek
philosophy only. This is very important to remember,
and we shall have to return to it again.

It is often supposed that this Logon of Philo, and the
Word which was in the beginning, are something very
obscure, some kind of mystery which few, if any, are
able to fathom, and which requires at all events a great
amount of philosophical training before it can be fully
apprehended. It seems to me to require nothing but
a careful study of the history of the word in Greece.

Logos in Greek, before it was adopted for higher
philosophical purposes, meant simply word, but word
not as a mere sound, but as thought embodied in
sound. The Greeks seem never to have forgotten that
logos, word, has a double aspect, its sound and its
meaning, and that, though we may distinguish the
1 Bigg, l.c., p. 18, note.

382

LECTUEE XII.

two, as we can the outside and inside of many things,
they can never have a separate existence. Philo was
fully aware of this, as is shown by the following
passage from his Life of Moses, iii. 113 (ii. 154) 1 :
4 The Logos is double both in the universe and in the
nature of man. In the universe there are both that
which relates to the immaterial and pattern ideas, out
of which the intelligible cosmos was established, and
that which relates to the visible objects (which are
accordingly imitations and copies of those ideas), out
of which this perceptible cosmos was completed. But
in man the one is inward and the other outward, and
the one is, as it were, a fountain, but the other sonorous
(yeycoros), flowing from the former. 5

Nothing could supply a better simile for God think-
ing and uttering the cosmos than the act of man in
thinking and uttering his thought. It is only our
complete misapprehension of the true nature of words
which has led people to suppose that Philo’s simile
was merely fanciful. The idea that the world was
thought and uttered or willed by God, so far from
being a cobweb of abstruse philosophy, is one of the
most natural and most accurate, nay most true con-
ceptions of the creation of the world, and, let me add
at once, of the true origin of species.

I was, I believe, one of the first who ventured to
use the traditions of uncivilised races as parallel
instances of classical myths, and as helps to the under-
standing of their origin, and I may venture perhaps
on a new experiment of utilising the philosophical
thoughts of a so-called savage race as likely to throw
light on the origin of what the Greeks meant by Logos.

1 Drummond, l.c., ii. p. 172.

THE LOGOS.

383

The Logos among the Xlamaths.

The Klamaths, one of the Red Indian tribes, lately
described by Mr. Gatchet and Mr. Horatio Hale, be-
lieve, as we are told, in a Supreme God, whom they
call c The Most Ancient/ c Our Old Father/ or c The
Old One on high . 9 He is believed to have created the
world that is, to have made plants, animals, and men.
But when asked how the Old Father created the world,
the Klamath philosopher replied: 1 By thinking and
willing / In this thinking and willing you have on
that distant soil the germs of the same thought which
on Greek soil became the Logos, and in the Fourth
Gospel is called the Word.

It may be thought that such an idea is far too
abstract and abstruse to arise in the minds of Red
Indians of the present day or of thousands of years
ago. It is quite true that in a more mythological
atmosphere the same thought might have been ex-
pressed by saying that the Old Father made the world
with his hands, or called it forth by his word of com-
mand, and that he breathed life into all living things.
The world when created might in that case have been
called the handiwork, or even the offspring and the
son of God.

It did not, however, require much observation to see
that there was order and regularity in nature, or
thought and will, as the Klamaths called it. The
regular rising of sun and moon would be sufficient to
reveal that. If the whole of nature were mere lumber
and litter, its author and ruler might have been a zero
or a fool. But there is thought in a tree, and there is
thought in a horse, and that thought is repeated again

384

LECTURE XII.

and again in every tree and in every horse. Is all
this like the sand of the desert, whisked about by a
sirocco, or is it thought and will, or what the Stoics
called it, the result of a \6yos o-Tiep^aTiKos ? As in our
own scientific, so in the earliest age of human observa-
tion and thought, the reason which underlies and per-
vades nature could not escape detection. It answered
readily to the reason of every thoughtful observer, so
that Kepler, after discovering the laws of the planetary
system, could truly say that he had thought again the
thoughts of God.

I cannot possibly give you here the whole history
of the Logos, and all the phases through which it
passed in the philosophical atmosphere of Greece
before it reached Philo, the Jewish philosopher, or
Christian philosophers, such as the author of the
Introduction to the Fourth Gospel, St. Clement,
Origen, and many others. In order to do that, I
should have to carry- you from the latest Stoics whose
schools were frequented by Philo at Alexandria, to
the Stoa where Aristotle taught his realism, and to
the Academy where Plato expounded his ideal philo-
sophy, nay, even beyond, to the schools of Anaxagoras
and Heraclitus. All this has been extremely well
done by Dr. Drummond in his Philo Judaeus . A
short survey must here suffice.

The Historical Antecedents of the Logos.

Before we attempt even a mere survey of these his-
torical antecedents of the Logos, or the Word, let us try
to reason out the same ideas by ourselves. Logos means
word and thought. Word and thought, as I hope to have
proved in my Science of Thought , are inseparable,

THE LOGOS.

385

they are but two aspects of the same intellectual act.
If we mean by thought what it means as soon as it is
expressed in a word, not a mere percept, not even
what it is often mistaken for, a Vorstellung , or what
used to be called a sensuous idea, but a concept, then
it is clear that a word, taken as a mere sound, without
a concept expressed by it, would be a non-entity, quire
as much as the concept would be a non-entity without
the word by which it is embodied. Hence it is that
the Greek logos means both word and thought, the
one inseparable from the other.

As soon as language had produced such names as
horse, dog, man or woman, the mind was ipso facto in
possession of what we call concepts or ideas. Every
one of these words embodies an idea, not only a general
more or less blurred image remaining in our memory
like the combined photographs of Mr. Galton, but a
concept — that is, a genuine thought under which every
individual horse or dog can be conceived, compre-
hended, classified and named. What is meant by the
name horse, can never be presented to our senses, but
only to our intellect, and it has been quite truly said
that no human eye has ever seen a horse, but only
this or that horse, grey, black, or brown, young or
old, strong or weak. Such a name and such a concept
as horse, could not represent the memory of repeated
sensuous impressions only. These impressions might
leave in our memory a blurred photographic image, but
never a concept, free from all that is individual, casual
and temporary, and retaining only what is essential or
what seemed to be essential to the framers of language
in all parts of the world. .It is quite true that each
individual has to learn his concepts or ideas by means
(4) • C c

386

LECTURE XXL

of sensuous perception, by discovering wbat general
features are shared in common by a number of indi-
viduals. It is equally true that we have to accept
the traditional names handed down to us by parental
tradition from time immemorial. But admitting all
this, we should ask, Whence sprang the first idea of
horse which we during our life on earth see realised in
every single horse and repeated with every new genera-
tion ? What is that typical character of horse which
can be named and can afterwards be scientifically
defined? Was there no artist, no rational being that
had to conceive the idea of horse, before there was
a single horse ? Could any artist produce the statue
of a horse, if he had never seen a horse? Will
material protoplasm, spontaneous evolution, the in-
fluence of environment, the survival of the fittest,
and all the rest — will any purely mechanical process
ever lead to a horse, whether it be a horse, or as yet a
hipparion only?' Every name means a species, and
one feels almost ashamed if one sees how much more
profound is the theory of the Origin of Species as
conceived by Plato than that of modem naturalists.

T3ie Origin of Species.

I confess I have always been surprised that these
old elementary teachings of Plato’s philosophy have
been so completely ignored when the discussion on
the origin of species was taken up again in recent
times. And yet we should never have spoken of the
origin of species but for Plato and his predecessors
in Greek philosophy. For species is but a translation
of etbos, and elbos is almost a synonym of Ibia. Is it
not perfectly unthinkable that living organic bodies,

THE LOGOS.

387

whether plants or animals, nay, that anything in this
universe, could have come to be what it is by mere
evolution, by natural selection, by survival of the
fittest, and all the rest, unless its evolution meant the
realisation of an idea ? Let us grant by all means that
the present home is the last term of a series of modifi-
cations, brought about by natural causes, of a t ype
which has existed ever since the Mesozoic epoch ; yet
we cannot but ask Whence that type ? and What is
meant by type? Was it mere undifferentiated proto-
plasm that by environment and other casual influences
might have become either a horse or a dog ? or must w T e
not admit a purpose, a thought, a kayos, a owe/tyum/co?
koyos, in the first protoplastic germ which could end in
one last term only, a horse or a dog, or whatever else
was thought and willed by a rational Power, or by
what the ancients called the Logos of God? Professor
Huxley himself speaks of the type of horse. What
can he mean by that, if not the idea of horse? It
matters little how such a type or such an idea was
realised, whether as a cell or as a germ, so long as we
recognise that there was an idea or a purpose in it,
or, to adopt the language of the Red Indians, so long
as we believe that everything that exists was thought
and willed by the £ Old One on high . 5 Is there reason
in the woxdd or not, and if there is, whose Reason is it?

That certain species were evolved from lower species,
even during the short time of which we possess any
certain knowledge, is no doubt a great discovery, but it
does not touch the deeper question of the origin of all
species. Whenever such transitions have been proved,
we should simply have to change our language, and no
longer call that a species which has been proved not

388

LECTUEE XII.

to be a species. We must use our words as we have
defined them, and species means an idea or an el&os,
that is an eternal thought of a rational Being. Such
a thought must vary in every individual manifestation
of it, but it can never change. Unless we admit the
eternal existence of these ideas in a rational Mind or
in the Primal Cause of all things, we cannot account
for our seeing them realised in nature, discovered by
human reason, and named by human language. This
becomes still clearer if, instead of natural productions,
we think of geometrical forms. Can we imagine that
a perfect circle, nay, a single straight line, was ever
formed by repeated experiments ? or have we not to
admit, before a perfect sphere becomes real, if ever it
does become real, the concept of a perfect sphere in
a rational, that is, a divine Mind ? The broad ques-
tion is whether the world, such as we know it and have
named it, is rational or casual. The choice does not
lie between a belief in evolution and special creation,
whatever that may mean, but between a belief in
Reason and a denial of Reason at the bottom of all
things.

If we want to account for a rational world and for
the permanence of typical outlines in every species,
our mind has to admit, first of all, a creative thought,
or what Professor Huxley calls a type. Do we not
see how every horse is moulded, as it were, in a per-
manent type, however much the Shetland pony may
differ from the Arab? It is of no use for Physical
Science to shut its ears against such speculations or
to call them metaphysical dreams. Physical Science
indulges in much wilder dreams when it speaks of
protoplasm, of sperms and germs, of heredity, and all

THE LOGOS.

389

the rest. "What is heredity but the permanence of
that invisible and yet most real type which Plato
called the idea ? Human reason has always revolted
against ascribing what is permanent to mere accident,
even to the iniiuence of environment, to natural selec-
tion, survival of the fittest, and all the rest. It
demands by right a real cause, sufficient for real
effects ; a rational cause, sufficient for rational effects.
That cause may be invisible, yet it is visible in its
effects, nor are invisible things less real than visible
ones. We must postulate invisible but real types, be-
cause without them their visible effects would remain
inexplicable. It is easy to say that like produces like,
but whence the first type ? Whence the tree before
there was a tree, whence man himself, before there was
man, and whence that mould in which each individual
seems cast, and which no individual can burst?
The presence of these types or specific forms, the
presence of order and law in the visible world, seems
to have struck the human mind at a much earlier
period than is commonly supposed. The Klamaths, as
we saw, said that the world was thought and willed,
Anaxagoras declared that there was Nous or Mind in
the world.

Heraclitus.

And even before Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, after
claiming fire, in its most abstract form, as the primi-
tive element of all things, postulated something beside
the material element, some controlling power, some
force and law; and he too called it Logos, i.e. reason or
word. Vague indications of the same idea may be dis-
covered in the mythological tradition of a Moira or

390

LECTURE XII.

Heimarmene, that is Destiny, and Heraclitus actually
used Heimarmene;, which Anaxagoras declared to he
an empty name (icevbv ovojxa, Alex. Aphrod. de Fato, 2)
as a synonym of his Logos. This is confirmed by
Stobaeus, saying (Eel. i. 5, p. 178) that Heraclitus
taught that the essence of Destiny was the Logos
which pervades the substance of the universe. Here the
Logos is what we should call law or reason, and what
the ancient poets of the Veda called i?ita, the Right 1 .
When we ask, however, what seems to us a most
natural question, whose that reason was, or who was
the law-giver, always acting in the fiery process of
the universe, so that in all the wars and conflicts
of the elements right and reason prevail, we get no
answer from Heraclitus. Some scholars hold that
Heraclitus took the Logos to be identical with the
Fire, but to judge from certain expressions, his Logos
seems rather a mode according to which the Fire acts
( Kara tov A oyov). Nor does it seem quite clear to me
that Heraclitus would have called the individual soul
a part of the Logos, instead of saying that the in-
dividual soul also, as an emanation ( ava6v\xia<ri$ ) of
the universal fire, was under the control of the Logos.
It is still more difficult to say what sense Logos
possessed before Heraclitus adopted it, and applied it
to express the order of the universe. There is nothing
to show that like later philosophers he took it in the
sense of word as the embodiment of thought and
reason. It probably meant no more to Heraclitus,
when he adopted it for a higher purpose, than reckon-
ing, rule, proportion, relation, in which sense we see it
used in such words as avak oyov, what is ava A oyov, or as
1 M. M/s Hibbert Lectures , p. 24=5.

THE LOGOS.

391

Heraclitus said, Kara Xoyov , according to law. It is
quite clear that the Logos of Heraclitus had not yet
assumed in his mind that definite meaning of a chain
of ideas connecting the First Cause with the pheno-
menal world, which it presented to the Stoics and to
Philo. It was as yet no more than that general reason
or reasonableness which struck the eyes and the mind
of man even on the lowest stage of civilisation.

Anaxagoras.

When Anaxagoras substituted Nous*, Mind, for Logos,
he went a step beyond, and was the first to claim some-
thing of a personal character for the law that governs
the world, and was supposed to have changed its raw
material into a cosmos. We may be able to conceive
a law without a person behind it, but Nous, Mind,
takes a thinker almost for granted. Yet Anaxagoras
himself never fully personified his Nous, never
grafted it on a God or any higher being. Nous
was with him a something like everything else, a
XPW a y a thing, as he called it, though the finest and
purest of all material things. In some of his utter-
ances Nous was really identified with the living soul,
nay, he seems to have looked upon every individual
soul as participating in the universal Nous and in
this universal chrema.

Socrates and Plato.

On the problem which interests us more specially,
namely the relation of the Logos or Nous to man
on one side and to God on the other, we gain little
till we come to Aristotle and the Stoics. So-
crates, if we take our idea of him from Xenophon,

392

LECTUKE XII.

retained the mythological phraseology of Greece, he
spoke of many Gods, yet he believed in One God 1
who rules the whole world and by whom man was
created 2 . This God is omnipresent, though invisible,
and when Socrates speaks of the thought in all
vricns h tt avri), he seems to express the same thought
as Heraclitus when speaking of the Logos, who always
is aid €&v, or as Anaxagoras when speaking of the Nous
which ordered all things (Ste/coV/r^cre navra xPW a ™)
(Diog. Laert. ii. 6).

Though we may recognise in all this more or less
conscious attempts to account for the presence of
something beside matter in the world, to discover an
invisible, possibly a divine agent or agency in making,
disposing, and ruling the world, and thus to connect
the phenomenal with the noumenal, the finite with
the infinite, the human with the divine, yet this last
deliberate step was not taken either by Socrates, or
by Plato. The simple question what the Logos was
with respect to the Deity, received no definite answer
from these philosophers.

It is 'well known that what we called before the
permanent types of all things were called by Plato the
ideas , by the Klamaths, the thoughts, willed by the
Creator. These ideas, which taken together formed
what Heraclitus meant by the eternal Logos, appear
in Plato’s philosophy as a system, built up archi-
tectonically, as the plan of the architecture of the
visible universe. Plato’s ideas, which correspond to
our natural species and genera, become more and more

1 Sympos. viii. 9, ml yap Zevs o axirbs doKcbv dvai voWcLs eircuvvptas

2 Xcn. Mem. i 4, 5.

THE LOGOS.

393

general till they rise to the ideas of the Good, the Just,
and the Beautiful. But instead of the many ideas
Plato speaks also of one general and eternal pattern
of the world which, like the idea of God, is not the
Creator himself, nor yet separable from him. This
pattern, though eternal, is yet a creation, though an
eternal creation, a world of thought prior to the
world of sense L This comes very near to the Stoic
Logos, as known to Philo.

In other places Plato admits a highest idea which
allows of no higher one, the last that can be known,
the idea of the Good, not simply in a moral, but like-
wise in a physical and metaphysical sense, the Mum-
mum Bonwnh. This highest idea of the Good is what
in religious language would be called the Supreme
Being or God. But Plato, as far as I can judge, is
never quite explicit in telling us what he conceived
this Good to be. It is true he speaks of it as the Lord
of Light (Republ. vi. 508), and he speaks of the sun as
thej son of the Good, whom the Good begat in his own
likeness, to be in the visible world in relation to sight
and the things of sight, what the Good is in the intel-
lectual world in relation to mind and the things of
mind. . . . And the soul, he continues, £ is like the eye:
when resting upon that on which truth and being shine,
the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with
intelligence. . . . And that which imparts truth to the
known and the power of knowing to the knower is
what I would have you term the Idea of Good/

Here Plato leaves us, nor is he more explicit as to
what the relation of that Idea of Good is to the other
ideas, and how it can fulfil all that the old idea of
1 Jowett, In trod. to the Timaeus, p. 568.

894

LECTURE XII.

God or the Gods was meant to fulfil. Whether it was
the only efficient cause of the world, or whether each
of the many ideas possessed its own efficient causality,
independent of the Idea of Good, is a question difficult
to answer out of Plato's own mouth. Plato speaks of
God and Gods, but he never says in so many words
‘ This, my Idea of the Good, is what you mean by
Zeus.' If we asked whether this Idea of the Good was
personal or not, we should receive no answer from Plato.
It is important, however, to keep in mind that Plato
speaks of one general and eternal pattern of the world
which, like the Idea of Good, is not the Creator him-
self, nor yet separable from him. This pattern, though
eternal, is created, a world of thought prior to the
world of sense 1 .

What remains dark and doubtful in Plato's system
is the relation of the visible to the invisible world, of
the phenomena to their ideas. The expressions which
he uses as to the phenomena participating in the
ideal, or the visible being a copy of the invisible, are
similes and no more. In the Timaeus he becomes
somewhat more explicit, and introduces his theory
of the creation of the universe as a living being, and
like every living being, possessed of a soul, the soul
being again possessed of mind 2 . This universe or
Cosmos or Uranos is there represented as the offspring
of God, and what is important to remark, he is called
Monogenes 3 , the only begotten, the unigenitus , or more
coiTectly the unicus, the unique or single, the one of
his kind. The imperfections that cannot be denied

1 See Jowett, Introd. to the Timaeus, p. 568.

3 Timaeus, 30 B, r6vde rdv /cocrjuou faov 'ejMpvxov evvow re,

3 Eis 686 jj,ovoyei'$}$ ovpavbs yeyovws ean re fcal It’ effrai , Tim.

Q1 T>

THE LOGOS.

395

to exist in the world and in man are explained as due
either to the Apevva, i. e. formless matter, which re-
ceives form through the ideas, or in the case of men,
to the fact that their creation was entrusted to the
minor deities, and did not proceed direct from the
Creator. Still the soul is everywhere represented as
divine, and must have been to Plato’s mind a connect-
ing link between the Divine and the Human, between
the invisible and the visible.

Aristotle.

Aristotle is far more explicit in defining what in his
philosophy is to take the place of Zeus, for it is curious
to observe how all these philosophers with all their
sublime ideas about the Divine, always start from their
old Zeus, and speak of their new ideas as taking the
place of Zeus, or of the Godhead. It was the Zeus of
his childhood or his deos which was explained by
Aristotle as being really to ttp&tov klvovv, the Prime
Mover, possibly to ttp&tov ethos ^ the Prime Form or
idea, as distinguished from fj Trpdorr) vkij, the Prime
Matter. He tells us also -what he considers all the
necessary qualities of this Prime Mover to be. It must
be one, immoveable, unchangeable, living, intelligent,
nay it must be active, i. e. thinking intelligence, intelli-
gence thinking itself (?j vorjcns voijcreoos vorjcris, Metaphys.
xi. 9, 4). The question of personality does not seem
to disturb the Greek thinkers as it does us. Aris-
totle's transcendent Godhead represents the oneness
of the thinker and thoughts, of the knower and the
known. Its relation to matter (vk tj) is that of the
form (ethos) subduing matter, but also that of the
mover moving matter. With all this, Aristotle has

396

LECTUEE XIT.

not in the end elaborated more than a transcendent
Godhead,, a solitary being thinking himself, some-
thing not very different from what the later Valen-
tinians might have called the General Silence, or
what Basilides meant by the non-existent God who
made the non-existent world out of non-existent
materials 1 . This could not give any satisfaction to
the religious sentiment which requires a living God,
and some explanation of the dependence of the world
on a divine ruler, and of the relation of the soul to
a Supreme Being.

Stoics.

We have thus far examined some of the materials
which were carried down the stream of Greek
philosophy till they reached the hands of Philo and
other Semitic thinkers who tried to reconcile them
with their ancient beliefs in their own personal yet
transcendent God. Before, however, we proceed
further to watch the process by which these two
streams, the one of Aryan, the other of Semitic
thought, became united, at first in the minds of Jewish
philosophers, and afterwards in the minds of Christian
believers also, we have still to follow the later de-,
velopment of the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle in
the schools of their successors, the Stoics and Neo-
Platonists. We need not dwell on any of their
theories, whether logical, ethical, or metaphysical, ex-
cept those that touch on the relation of the finite
to the infinite, the human to the divine, the (jxxLvoixeva
to the Qvra .

1 Ovrm ovk ctiy Beds k-jroirjcre KotXfiov ovk ovra k£ ovk tvrcav. (Bigg,
l.c., p. 23, 31.)

THE LOGOS.

897

The Stoics required a God in the old sense of the
word. They were not satisfied with the supreme
idea of Plato, nor with the Prime Mover of Aristotle.
Like their predecessors, they also had discovered law,
order, or necessity and causation in the visible world,
and they postulated a cause sufficient to account for
the existence of that law and order in the phenomenal
cosmos. That cause, however, with the Stoics was
not transcendent, but immanent. Reason or Logos
was discovered by them as present in every part of
the universe, as holding the universe together ; nay it
w r as itself considered as corporeal, and so far as it
represented deity, deity also was to the Stoics some-
thing corporeal, though ethereal or igneous 1 . Yet
they placed a difference between Hyle> matter, and the
Logos or Supreme Reason or God which pervaded all
matter. This Logos, according to them, was not only
creative ( itoiovv ), but it continued to control all things
in the world. Some Stoics distinguished indeed
between the Logos and Zeus, the Supreme God, but
the orthodox doctrine of the Stoic school is that God
and the Divine Reason in the world are the same,
though they might be called by different names. The
Stoics, therefore, were true pantheists. With them,
as with Heraclitus, everything was full of the Gods,
and they were anxious to say that this divine presence
applied even to the meanest and most vulgar things,
to ditches and vermin.

The Stoics, however, spoke not only of one universal
Logos pervading the whole cosmos, they likewise
admitted, as if in remembrance of Plato’s ideas, a
number of logoi, though in accordance with Aristotle's

1 TLvtvua v of: pop teal irvpw 5es. Poseidon, in Siob. Eel. i. 58.

398

LECTURE XII.

teaching they held that these logoi dwelt within, and
determined all individual things (Xoyot ivvXoi , uni-
versalia in re). These logoi were called < mepixauKoi
or seminal, being meant to account, like the sperms,
for the permanence of the type in the phenomenal
world, for what with less perfect metaphor we now
call inherited specific qualities.

These Logoi, whether singly or comprehended as the
one universal Logos, had to account for all that was
permanent in the variety of the phenomenal world.
They formed a system ascending from the lowest to
the highest, which was reflected in what we should
call the evolution of nature. A separate position,
however, was assigned to man. The human soul
was supposed to have received in a direct way a
portion of the universal Logos, and this constituted
the intelligence or reason which man shared in com-
mon with the gods. Besides this divine gift, the
human soul was supposed to be endowed with speech,
the five senses, and the power of reproduction. And
here we meet for the first time a definite statement
that speech is really the external Logos (X. tt pocjiopiKos),
without which the internal Logos (X. ivbidderos) would
be as if it were not. The word is shown to be the
manifestation of reason; both are Logos, only under
different aspects. The animal soul was conceived as
something material, composite, and therefore perish-
able, to which the Logos was imparted. Like the
Ved&ntists, the Stoics taught that the soul would
live after death, but only to the end of the world
(the Kalpa), when it would be merged into the uni-
versal soul. Whence that universal soul took its
origin, or what it was, if different both from the

THE LOGOS.

399

Logos and from matter we are never distinctly
told. What is clear, however, is that the Stoics
looked upon the Logos as eternal. In one sense the
Logos was with God, and, in another, it might be said
to be God. It was the Logos, the thought of God,
as pervading the world, which made the world what
it is, viz. a rational and intelligible cosmos ; and it was
the Logos again that made man what he is, a rational
and intelligent soul.

PMlo’s Inheritance.

You see now what a large inheritance of philo-
sophical thought and philosophical language was
bequeathed to men like Philo, who, in the first
century before our ei*a, being themselves steeped in
Semitic thought, were suddenly touched by the In-
vigorating breezes of the Hellenic spirit. Alexandria
was the meeting-place of these two ancient streams
of thought, and it was in its Libraries and Museum
that the Jewish religion experienced its last philo-
sophical revival, and that the Christian religion for
the first time asserted its youthful strength against
the philosophies both of the East and of the West.
You will now perceive the important representative
character of Philo’s writings which alone allow ns an
insight into the historical transition of the Jewish
religion from its old legendary to a new philosophical
and almost Christian stage. Whether Philo personally
exercised a powerful influence on the thoughts of his
contemporaries, we cannot tell. But he evidently
represented a powerful religious and philosophical
movement, a movement which later on must have
extended to many of the earliest Christian converts

400

LECTTJBE XIT.

at Alexandria, whether Jews or Greeks by birth and
education. Of Philo's private life the only thing
which concerns us is that he was a student who
found his highest happiness in the study of his own
religion and of the philosophical systems of the great
thinkers of Greece, both ancient and modern. Bom
probably about 20 B, c., he died about the middle of
the first century a.d. He was therefore the con-
temporary of Christ, though he never mentions him.

FMlo’s Philosophy.

What concerns us are the salient doctrines of Philo’s
philosophy. Philo never surrendered his belief in
Jehovah, though his Jehovah had not only been
completely freed from his anthropomorphic character,
but raised so high above all earthly things that he
differed but little from the Platonic Godhead. Philo
did not, however, believe in a creation out of nothing,
but like the Stoics he admitted a Hyle, matter or sub-
stance, by the side of God, nay as coeval with God,
yet not divine in its origin. Like the Apeiron, the
Infinite of Anaximander, this Hyle is empty, passive,
formless, nay incapable of ever receiving the whole
of what the Divine Eeing could confer upon it, though
it is sometimes said that all things are filled or per-
vaded by God \ and nothing left empty 1 2 .

And yet the same God in his own essence can never,
according to Philo, be brought into actual contact
with matter, but he employed intermediate, and un-
embodied powers (bvvdfjLeis), or, as we may call them,

1 As Plato said. Laws, 899, de&v eft-cu irX'ripr) irdvra.

2 Udvra yap Tr€Tr\7jp<ytt*v 6 $e6s, xal 8ia ttovtojv 5te X’fjXvOc, ml itsvuv
o voev ovdk 'ipyptov dvoXikonrev. Leg. aileg. I. vol, i. p. 52, iii. p. 88.

THE LOGOS.

401

Ideas, in order that each genus might take its proper
form 1 .

Ike hogos as a Bridge Tbetween God and tke World.

Nothing therefore could he more welcome to Philo
than this Stoic theory of the Logos or the Logoi for
bringing the transcendent Cause of the World into
relation with the phenomenal world. It helped him
to account for the creation of the world, and for the
presence of a controlling reason in the phenomenal
cosmos, and he had only to apply to the Logoi the
more familiar name of Angels in order to bring his
old Jewish belief into harmony with his new philo-
sophical convictions. As Milman has truly remarked,
4 Wherever any approximation had been made to the
truth of one First Cause, either awful religious
reverence (the Jews) or philosophical abstraction (the
Greeks) had removed the primal Deity entirely be-
yond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that
the intercourse of the Deity with men, the moral
government, and even the original creation, had been
carried on by intermediate agency, either in Oriental
language of an emanation, or in the Platonic of the
wisdom, reason, or intelligence of One Supreme/

Philo, who combines the awful reverence of the
Semitic with the philosophical sobriety of the Greek
mind, holds that God in the highest sense forms to
himself, first of all, an ideal invisible world (koV/xo?
vorjToSy aopafos) containing the ideas of all things,

1 5 E£ ItcdvrjS yelp rravr \ykvvr\Gzv 6 0e6s, ovk ecpairrSfievos avrSs’ ov
yelp tfv 6 i pus at reipov /cal ir€<pvpp£vr}$ vXtjs ipavetv rbv XSpova /cal pa/capiov,
aAAa rats acrcapaTois dvv&pecnv, wv ervpov ovopa al Biat, Karr €\piia err o
trpos rb y&vos tmcrTov tt)v apporroverav \a&€iv pop<pr\v. Be Saerificant.
13, p. 261.

(4) Dd

402

LECTUBE XII.

sometimes called the world of ideas, Kocrpos IbeQv, or
even the idea of ideas, Ibia t&v Ibe&v. These ideas
are the patterns, ra liapabeiyixara, of all things, and
the power by which God conceived them is frequently
called the Wisdom of God (<ro$ta or imcrTifjfAr)). Nay,
personification and mythology creep in even into
the holy of holies of philosophy, so that this most
abstract Wisdom is spoken of as the Wife of God 1 ,
the Mother or Nurse of all things sensible (pLrjrrfp koI
Tidrjvrj r&v Skew). Yet even thus, this Mother and Nurse
is not allowed to bear or suckle her own children 2 .
The Divine Wisdom is not allowed to come into
contact with gross matter as little as God himself.
That contact is brought about through the Logos,
as a bond which is to unite heavenly and earthly
things 3 and to transfer the intellectual creation from
the divine mind upon matter. This Logos is supposed
to possess certain predicates, but these predicates which
may be called the eternal predicates of the Godhead, —
for the Logos also was originally but a predicate of
the Godhead, — are soon endowed with a certain inde-
pendence and personality, the most important being
goodness (rj ayadorrjs) and power (rj e£ov<na). This
goodness is also called the creative power (rj ttoititikii
bvvapus), the other is called the royal or ruling power
(f} fiacnXiKr} bvvafus), and while in some passages these
powers of God are spoken of as God, in others
they assume if not a distinct personality, yet an

1 Drummond, 1. c., ii. p. 206.

2 In some places, however, Philo forgets the supermundane
character of this Sophia or Episteme, and in De ebriet. 8. i. 361 seq.,
he writes : ^ rrapaSegapevT) to rod Oeov cnrippa, Te\ecr<f>6poi$ faSicrt
rbv p6vov ml dyaTrrjTbv altfOrjrbv vtbv aire/cu^cre rovde rbv tcbcrpov.

3 Philo, Vit. Mos. iii. 14 ; Bigg, Christian Platonists , p. 259.

THE LOGOS.

403

independent activity k Though in many places these
powers (Swazis) are used as synonymous with the
Logos, yet originally they were conceived as the
might of divine action, while the Logos was the
mode of that action.

X.ogros as the Sou of God.

It must always be remembered that Philo allows
himself great freedom in the employment of his
philosophical terminology, and is constantly carried
away into mythological phraseology, which after-
wards becomes hardened and almost unintelligible.
Thus the intellectual creation in the Divine Mind
is spoken of not only as a cosmos, but as the
offspring, the son of God, the first-born, the only
begotten (vlos rod Oeod, povoyevrjs, upayroyovos) ; yet
in other places he is called the elder son (rrpeorpvTepos
vlos) as compared with the visible world, which is
then called the younger son of God (vevrepos vlos rod
Oeod), or even the other God (bevrtpos dtos).

All these terms, at first purely poetical, become
after a time technical, not used once or casually, but
handed down as the characteristic marks of a philo-
sophical school. To us they are of the greatest impor-
tance as sign-posts showing the road on which certain
ideas have travelled from Athens to Alexandria, till
they finally reached the mind of Philo, and not of Philo
only, but also of his contemporaries and successors,
whether Jews, or Greeks, or Christians. Wherever we
meet with the word Logos, we know that we have to
deal with a word of Greek extraction. When Philo
adopted that word, it could have meant for him sub-

1 Bigg, Christian Platonists , p. 13, note.

Dch

404

LECTUBE XII.

stantially neither more nor less than what it had meant
before in the schools of Greek philosophy. Thus, when
the ideal creation or the Logos had been called by
Philo the only begotten or unique son (vlds ixovoyevijs),
the son of God (vlos dtov), and when that name was after-
wards transferred by the author of the Fourth Gospel
to Christ, what was predicated of Him can only have
been in substance what was contained before in these
technical terms, as used at first at Athens and after-
wards at Alexandria. To the author of the Gospel,
Christ was not the Logos because he was Jesus of
Nazareth, the son of Mary, but because he was be-
lieved to be the incarnate Word of God, in the true
sense of the term. This may seem at first very strange,
but it shows how sublime the conception of the Son
of God, the first-born, the only one, was in the minds
of those who were the first to use it, and who did not
hesitate to transfer it to Him in whom they believed
that the Logos had become flesh (crap£ eyevero), nay
in whom there dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily \

It is true that Christian writers of high authority
prefer to derive the first idea of the Logos, not from
pagan Greece, but from Palestine, recognising its first
germ in the deutero-canonical Wisdom. That Philo
is steeped in Jewish thought who would deny, or who
would even assert? That the Hebrew Prophets were
familiar with the idea of a Divine Word and Spirit,
existing in God and proceeding from God, is likewise
admitted on all sides. Thus we read in Psalm xxxiii. 6,
4 By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and
all the host of them by the breath of his mouth '
1 Col. ii. 9.

THE LOGOS.

405

(rrt and W). Again, evil. 20: ‘He sent his word
and healeth them ; 5 civ. 30, c Thou sendest forth
thy spirit, they are created, and thou renewosfc the
face of the earth ; ’ cxlvii, 18, 4 He sendeth out Ids
word and melteth them/ Still, in all these passages
the word and the spirit do not mean much more than
the command, or communication of Jehovah. And the
same applies to passages where the Divine Presence or
Manifestation is called his Angel, the Angel of Jehovah.
Indeed it would be difficult to say what difference there
is between the Angel of Jehovah, Jehovah himself, and
God, for instance in the third chapter of Exodus ; and
again in Gen. xxxii, between God, the Angel, and Man.
And this Angel with whom Jacob wrestled is men-
tioned by so ancient a prophet as Hosea xii. 4.

All these conceptions are purely Jewish, unin-
fluenced as yet by any Greek thought. What I
doubt is whether any of these germs, the tkeophany
through Angels, the hypostasis of the Word of Jehovah
(njrp ~OT), or lastly the personification of Wisdom
(nwn) could by themselves have grown into what the
Greek philosophers and Philo meant by Logos. We
must never forget that Logos, when adopted by Philo,
was no longer a general and undefined word. It had
its technical meaning quite as much as ovo-Ca, vi rep-
overia , &7rAa)(m, evooens, 6ea xm. All these terms are
of Greek, not of Hebrew workmanship. The roots of
the Logos were from the first intellectual, those of
the Angels theological, and when the Angels, whether
as ministers and messengers of God, or as beings
intermediate between God and men, became quickened
by the thoughts of Greek philosophy, the Angels
and Archangels seem to become mere names and

406

LECTURE XII.

reminiscences, and what they are truly meant for, are
the ideas of the Platonists, the Logoi of the Stoics,
the archetypal thoughts of God, the heavenly
models of all things, the eternal seals imprinted on
matter L None of these thoughts has been proved to
be Semitic.

Philo speaks distinctly of the eternal Logoi, £ which/
he says, c it is the fashion to call Angels 2 /

Wisdom or Sophia.

And as little as the belief in Angels would ever
have led to the theory of the Logos or the Logoi,
as a bond between the visible and the invisible
world, can it be supposed that such germinal ideas
as that of the Shechinah or the Glory of God, or
the Wisdom of God, would by themselves and without
contact with Greek thought have grown into purely
philosophical conceptions, such as we find in Philo
and his successors. The Semitic Wisdom that says
c I was there when He prepared the Heaven/ might
possibly have led on to Philo’s Sophia or Episteme
which is with God before the Logos. But the
Wisdom of the Proverbs is certainly not the Logos,
but, if anything, the mother of the Logos 3 , an almost
mythological being. We know how the Semitic mind
was given to represent the active manifestations of
the Godhead by corresponding feminine names. This

1 ’Ideal, Xoyoi, rviroi , cr<ppay'i8es, but also dvvapets, ayyeXoi, and even

X&pires.

2 Philo, Be Somniis, i. 19, dOavarois XSyois , ovs tcakeiv edos ay~
yeXovs : ibid. i. 22, ravras Saipovas p\v of dXXot <piX6<ro<poi, 6 Sk lepds
Xdyos &yy eXovs eicaQe mXeiv. Ibid. i. 23, ayyeXot X6yoi Qeioi.

3 De Profug. 20, p. 562, A i6ti y ovewv &<p&apTajv mi mdapcordrcov
eXax*t Trarpbs phv $eov , . . . pyTpus 5% crotpias , Si 3 rd oXa rjX0ev ds
yevecnv*

THE LOGOS.

407

is very different from representing the Intelligible
World (the koct}jlos vorjros) as the Logos, the Word of
God, the whole Thought of God, or the Idea of Ideas.
Yet the two ideas, the Semitic and the Greek, were
somehow brought together, or rather forced together,
as when we see how Philo represents Wisdom, the
virgin daughter of God (Bethuel), as herself the Father,
begetting intelligence and the soul h Nay, he goes
on to say that though the name of Wisdom is
feminine, its nature is masculine. All virtues have
the titles of women, but the powers and actions of

men Hence Wisdom, the daughter of God, is

masculine and a father, generating in souls learning
and instruction and science and prudence, beautiful and
laudable actions 1 2 . In this process of blending Jewish
and Greek thought, the Greek elements in the end
always prevailed over the Jewish, the Logos was
stronger than the Sophia, and the Logos remained
the First-born, the only begotten Son of God, though
not yet in a Christian sense. Yet, when in later times
we see Clement of Alexandria speak of the divine and
royal Logos (Strom, v. 14), as the image of God, and
of human reason as the image of that image, which
dwells in man and unites man with God, can we
doubt that all this is Greek thought, but thinly
disguised under Jewish imagery? This Jewish
imagery breaks forth once more when the Logos is
represented as the High Priest, as a mediator
standing between humanity and the Godhead. Thus
Philo makes the High Priest say : 6 1 stand between
the Loid and you, I who am neither uncreated like

1 Bigg, l.c., p. 16, note ; p. 213.

2 Philo, De Prof., 9. (1, 553).

408

LECTURE XII.

God, nor created like yon, but a mean between two
extremes, a hostage to either side 1 .

Is it possible that the injunction that the High
Priest should not rend his clothes which are the
visible cosmos (De Profugis, § 20), suggested the
idea that the coat of Christ which was without seam
woven from the top throughout, should not be rent,
so that both the Messianic and the Philonic pro-
phecies were fulfilled at the same time and in the
same manner 2 1

To the educated among the Rabbis who argued with
Christ or his disciples at Jerusalem, the Logos was
probably as well known as to Philo ; nay, if Philo had
lived at Jerusalem he would have found little difficulty
in recognising a Oelos A oyos in Christ, as he had
recognised it in Abraham and in Moses 3 . If Jews
could bring themselves to recognise their Messiah
in Jesus of Nazareth, why should not a Greek
have discovered in Him the fulness of the Divine
Logos, i.e. the realisation of the perfect idea of the
Son of God %

It may be quite true that all this applies to a
small number only, and that the great bulk of the
Jews were beyond the reach of such arguments.
Still, enlightened Jews like Philo were not only
tolerated, but were ’honoured by their co-religionists
at Alexandria. It was recognised that to know God
or Jehovah, as He was represented in the Old Testa-
ment, was sufficient for a life of faith, hope, discipline

1 Bigg, I.c., p. 20.

3 The words used in the N.T. x ir ^ v v<pwrb$ h 3 f 6\ov remind one
of Philo, De Monarch, ii. § 56, okos di' '6kov vatdvQivos .

3 Leg. Alleg. III. 77. (i. 130). Philo does not seem as yet
to have identified the Logos with the Messiah.

THE LOGOS.

409

and effort; but to know God in the soul, as Philo
knew Him, was considered wisdom, vision, and peace.

Philo, however vague and uncertain some of his
thoughts may be, is quite distinct and definite when
he speaks of the Logos as the Divine Thought which,
like a seal, is stamped upon matter and likewise
on the mortal soul. Nothing in the whole world
is to him more Godlike than man, who was formed
according to the image of God (tear ekoVa Oeov, Gen.
L 27), for, as the Logos is an image of God, human
reason is the image of the Logos. But we must
distinguish here too between man as part of the
intelligible, and man as part of the visible world.
The former is the perfect seal, the perfect idea or
ideal of manhood, the latter its more or less imperfect
multiplication in each individual man. There is
therefore no higher conception of manhood possible
than that of the ideal son, or of the idea of the son,
realised in the flesh. No doubt this was a bold step,
yet it was not bolder on the part of the author of
the Fourth Gospel, than when Philo recognised in
Abraham and others sons adopted of the Father h
It was indeed that step which changed both the Jew
and the Gentile into a Christian, and it was this
Jsexj^step which Celsus, from his point of view,
declared to be impossible for any true philosopher,
and which gave particular offence to those who,
under Gnostic influences, had come to regal’d the
flesh, the <r&p£, as the source of all evil.

Monogengs, the Only Begotten.

We tried before to trace the word Logos back as far

1 Sobrxet. 11 (1, 401), yeyovas dcrirotrjTos avra> novas vlos .

410

LECTUBE XII.

as Anaxagoras and Heraclitus ; we can trace the term
fiovoyevrjs nearly as far. It occurs in a fragment of
Parmenides, quoted above (p. 333), as an epithet of the
Supreme Being, to ov , where it was meant to show
that this Supreme Being can be only one of its kind,
and that it would cease to be what it is meant to be if
there were another. Here the idea of -yevr}$, meaning
begotten, is quite excluded. The same word is used
again by Plato in the Tixnaeus, where he applies it to
the visible world, which he calls a £3oz> oparov ra opara
Trepiiyov, an animate thing visible and comprehending
all things visible, the image of its maker, a sensible God,
the greatest and best, the fairest and most perfect, this
one world (ouranos) Monogen&s, unique of its kind 1 .

And why did Plato use that word monogenes ? He
tells us himself (Timaeus 31). ‘Are we right in saying,’
he writes, * that there is one world (ouranos), or shall
we rather say that there are many and infinite?
There is one, if the created universe accords with the
original. For that which includes all other intelligible
creatures cannot have a second for companion ; in that
case there would be need of another living being
which would include these two, and of which they
would be parts, and the likeness would be more truly
said to resemble not those two, but that other which
includes them. In order then that the world may be
like the perfect animate Being in unity, he who made
the world (cosmos), made Him not two or infinite in
number, but there is and ever will be one only,
begotten and created.’

1 Tim. 92 0, oSe 6 ko&jxos ovrco 01 / Spardv ret, Spara ir€pUx ov ’
*hc<hv rov ttoitjtov, debs alaOrjTos, fikyioros ml apterros /caAAtcrrds re ml
tgXg&tcltqs jiyovcv, sis ovpavbs o5e pLOVOy&fy &v.

TEE LOGOS.

411

If applied to the begotten or visible world, mono-
genes might have been and was translated the on!}'
begotten, unigenitus, but its true meaning was here
also 4 the one of its kind/ Here, then, in these abstruse
Platonic speculations we have to discover the first-
germs of Monogenes , the only begotten of the Father,
which the old Latin translations render more correctly
by uniats than by unigenitus . Here, in this intel-
lectual mint, the metal was melted and coined which
both Philo and the author of the Fourth Gospel used
for their own purposes. It is quite true that mono -
genes occurs in the Greek translation of the Old Testa-
ment also, but what does it mean there ? It is applied
to Sarah, as the only daughter of her father, and to
Tobit and Sarah, as the only children of their parents.
There was no necessity in cases of that kind to lay
any stress on the fact that the children were begotten.
The word here means nothing but an only child,
or the only children of their parents. In one passage
however, in the Book of Wisdom (vii. 22), mono-
genes has something of its peculiar philosophical
meaning, when it is. said that in Wisdom there is
a spirit intelligent, holy, monogenes , manifold, subtle,
and versatile. In the New Testament, also, when we
read (Luke viii. 42) that a man had one only daughter,
the meaning is clear and simple, and very different
from its technical meaning in vids povoyevris as the
recognised name of the Logos. So recognised was this
name, that when Valentinus speaks of *0 M ovoyevr\$ by
himself we know that he can only mean the Logos, or
Nous, the Mind, with him the offspring of the ineffable
Depth or Silence (B vQo$\ which alone embraced the
greatness of the First Father, itself the father and

412

LECTURE XII.

beginning of all things. Even so late as the Synod
of Antioch (269 a.d.) we can still perceive very clearly
the echo of the philosophical language of the Judaeo-
Alexandrian school. In their Confession of Faith they
confess and proclaim the Son as c begotten, an only Son
(yevvyrov, vlbv ixovoyevrj), the image of the unseen God.
the first-born of all creation, the Wisdom and Word
and Power of God, who was before the ages, not by
foreknowledge, but by essence and subsistence, God,
son of God/

Philo, of course, always uses the only begotten Son
(vibs ftovoyevris) in its philosophical sense as the Thought
of God, realised and rendered visible in the world,
whether by an act of creation or by way of emanation.
He clearly distinguishes the Supreme Being and the
God, ro 02 /, from the Thought or Word of that Being, the
Xoyos'Tov ovros. This Logos comprehends a number of
logoi 1 which Philo might equally well have called
ideas in the Platonic sense. In fact he does so occa-
sionally, as when he calls the Logos of God the idea
of all ideas (ibia rO>v Ibz&v, 6 6eov Koyos). Whether this
Logos became ever personified with him, is difficult
to say; I have found no passage which would prove
this authoritatively. But the irresistible mytho-
logical tendency of language shows itself everywhere.
When Philo speaks of the Logos as the first-born
(Trpooroyozw), or as the unique son (vios fjLovoyevrjs ), this
need be no more as yet than metaphorical language.
But metaphor soon becomes hardened into myth. When
we speak of our own thoughts, we may call them the
offspring of our mind, but very soon they may be
spoken of as flying away, as dwelling with our friends,
1 Drummond, Lc., ii. p. 217.

THE LOGOS.

413

as having wings like angels. The same happened t« >
the Logoi and the Logos, as the thought of God. His
activities became agents, and these agents, as we shall
see, soon became angels.

What is more difficult to understand is what Philo
means when he recognises the Logos in such men a>
Abraham, Melchizedek, or Moses. He cannot possibly
mean that they represent the whole of the Logos, for
the whole of the Logos, according to Philo’s philosophy,
is realised twice only, once in the noumenaL and again,
less perfectly, in the phenomenal world. In the phe-
nomenal world in which Abraham lived, lie could be
but one only of the many individuals representing the
logos or the idea of man, and his being taken as repre-
senting the Logos could mean no more than that he
was a perfect realisation of what the logos of man was
meant to he, or that the full measure of the logos as
divine reason dwelt in him, as light and as the rebuking
conscience 1 . Here too we must learn, what we have
often to learn in studying the history of religion and
philosophy, that when we have to deal with thoughts
not fully elaborated and cleared, it is a mistake to try
to represent them as clearer than they were when left
to us by their authors.

Restricting ourselves, however, to the technical
terms used by Philo and others, I think we may safely
say that whosoever employs the phrase vlos fiovoyemfc
the only begotten Son, be he Philo, or the author of
the Fourth Gospel, or St. Clement, or Origen, uses
ancient Greek language and thought, and means by
them what they originally meant in Greek.

Philo was satisfied with having found in the
1 Drummond, l.c., ii. pp. 210; 225 seq.

414

LECTURE XII,

Greek Logos what he and many with him were
looking for, the bridge between the Human and
the Divine, which had been broken in religion by
the inapproachableness of Jehovah, and in philo-
sophy by the incompatibility between the Absolute
Being and the phenomenal world. He does not
often dwell on ecstatic visions which are supposed to
enable the soul to see and feel the presence of God.
In a beautiful allegory of Jacob’s dream, he says:
4 This is an image of the soul starting up from the
sleep of indifference, learning that the world is full of
God, a temple of God. The soul has to rise/ he says,
4 from the sensible world to the spiritual world of ideas,
till it attains to knowledge of God, which is vision or
communion of the soul with God, attainable only by
the purest, and by them but rarely, that is in moments
of ecstasy/

It is clear that this current which carried Hellenic
ideas into a Jewish stream of thought, was not confined
to the Jews of Alexandria, but reached Jerusalem and
other towns inhabited by educated Jews. Much has
been written as to whether the author of the Fourth
Gospel borrowed his doctrine of the incarnate Logos
directly from Philo. It seems to me a question which
it is almost impossible to answer either way. Dr.
Westcott, whose authority is deservedly high, does
not seem inclined to admit a direct influence. Even
Professor Harnack (l.c. i. p. 85) thinks that the Logos
of St. John has little more than its name in common
with the Logos of Philo. But no one can doubt that
the same general current through which the name of
Logos and all that it implies, reached Philo and the
Jews, must have reached the author of the Johannean

THE LOGOS.

415

Gospel also. Such words as Logos and Logos mono-
genes are historical facts, and exist once and once only.
Whoever wrote the beginning of that Gospel must
have been in touch with Greek and Judaeo- Alex-
andrian philosophy, and must have formed his view of
God and the world under that inspiration. In the
eyes of the historian, and still more of the student of
language, this seems to be beyond the reach of doubt,
quite as much as that whoever speaks of ; the cate-
gorical imperative ’ has been directly or indirectly in
contact with Kant.

The early Christians were quite aware that their
pagan opponents charged them with having borrowed
their philosophy from Plato and Aristotle 1 . Nor
was there any reason why this should have been
denied. Truth may safely be borrowed from all
quarters, and it is not the less true because it has
been borrowed. But the early Christians were very
angry at this charge, and brought the same against
their Greek critics. They called Plato an Attic Moses,
and accused him of having stolen his wisdom from
the Bible. Whoever was right in these recrimina-
tions, they show at all events the close relations
which existed between the Greeks and Christians in
the early days of the new Gospel, and this is the
only thing important to us as historians.

We cannot speak with the same certainty with
regard to other more or less technical terms applied
to the Logos by Philo, such as irpooroyovos, the first-
born, elKco v 6<=ov } the likeness of God, avOpowros Oeov,
the man of God, tt apabetyim, the pattern, ortaa , the
shadow, and more particularly apx^pevs, the high
1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, pp. 5 seq.

416

LECTURE XII.

priest, 77 apaK\yiTo$, the intercessor 1 , &c. But the im-
portant point is that all these names, more or less
technical, were known to Philo, long before they were
used by Christian writers, that the ideas contained
in them were of ante-Christian origin, and if accepted
by the followers of Christ, could at first have been
accepted by them in their antecedent meaning only.
Nay, may we now go a step further, and say that, unless
these words had been used in their peculiar meaning
by Philo and by his predecessors and contemporaries,
we should never have heard of them in Christian
literature ? Is not this the strongest proof that
nothing of the best thought of the Greek and of the
Jewish world was entirely lost, and that Christianity
came indeed in the fulness of time to biend the pure
metal that had been brought to light by the toil of
centuries in the East and in the West into a new and
stronger metal, the religion of Christ ? If we read the
beginning of the Fourth Gospel, almost every other
word and thought seems to be of Greek workmanship.
I put the words most likely to be of Greek rather
than Jewish origin in italics: — In the beginning
was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God ,
and the Word was God 2 . All things were made by
him . In him was life, and the life was the light 3 of
the world. It was the true light which lighteth every
man. And the Word was made flesh — and we
behold his glory 3 4 as of the only begotten of the Father .
No one hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten

3 Hatch, Essays on Biblical Greek , p. 82.

2 The same amphiboly exists in Philo, see before, p. 398.

8 The (pcos of Plato, Republ. vi. 508, and of Philo, De Somn. i. 18,
p. 632, t rpajTov i&v 6 6eb$ <pws kart. See also Psalms li. 4 ; lx. 19.

4 The 5 o£a of Philo.

THE LOGOS.

417

Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has
declared him V

We have thus seen how the Jews, with whom
the gulf between the invisible and the visible world
had probably become wider than with any other
people, succeeded nevertheless, nay possibly on that
very account, in drawing the bonds between God and
man as closely together as they can be drawn, and
that they did so chiefly with the help of inspiration
received from Greek philosophy. God before the
creation was, according to Philo, sufficient for Himself,
and even after the creation He remained the same
(De mut. nom. 5, p. 585). When Philo calls Him the
creator (ktlctttjs), the Demiurgos, and the Father, he
does this under certain well-understood limitations.
God does not create directly, but only through the
Logos and the Powers. The Logos, therefore, the
thought of God, was the bond that united heaven and
earth, and through it God could be addressed once more
as the Father, in a truer sense than He had ever been
before. The world and all that was within it was
recognised as the true Son, sprung from the Father, yet
inseparable from the Father. The world was once more
full of God, and yet in His highest nature God was
above the world, unspotted from the world, eternal
and unchangeable.

The one point in Philo’s philosophy which seems to
me not clearly reasoned out is the exact relation of

1 TEv apxa ° Ao-yos, icat 6 Xoyos irpos tov ©eov, icai 6 ©€0$ 6

Ao*yos. iTavra Si’ avrov eyevero 0 kv avrw £ctii) 9jv, /cal £coi} iqvTci
4>&S twv dv0pa>Tra)v* rjv rd <pm rb aXyOtvov, o 4>a)Tx£ei -iravra dvOpcoirov.
ml 6 Xoyos <?ap£ eyevero, / cal hQeaaapLeBa tt]v So£av avrot), So|av Ss
jxovo'yevO'Os irap& warp 6s. 0ebv ouSels l-dopa/ce ■ncovorc 6 p.ovoY€Vt[S
mos, <3 cup els top /c6\ttov rod varpSs, bcuvos efayrjaaTO.

(4) Ee

418

LECTUEE XII.

the individual soul to God 1 . Here the thoughts of
the Old Testament seem to clash in Philo's mind with
the teachings of his Greek masters, and to confuse
what may be called his psychology. That Philo
looked upon human nature as tw T ofold, as a mixture
of body and soul (crco/xa and yj/vxr}) is clear enough. The
body made of the elements is the abode, the temple,
but also the tomb of the soul. The body is generally
conceived as an evil, it is even called a corpse which we
have to carry about with us through life. It includes
the senses and the passions arising from the pleasures
of the senses, and is therefore considered as the source
of all evil. We should have expected that Philo, the
philosopher, would have treated man as part of the
manifold Divine Logos, and that the imperfection of his
nature would have been accounted for, like all imper-
fections in nature, by the incomplete ascendancy of the
Logos over matter. But here the Old Testament doc-
trine comes in that God breathed into man’s nostrils
the breath of life and man became a living soul. On
the strength of this, Philo recognises the eternal element
of the soul in the divine spirit in man (rd deiov
TTvtvfjLa), while Soul (^vxv) has generally with him a
far wider meaning. It comprehends all conscious life,
and therefore sensation also {aicrOrjcr is), though this
would seem to be peculiar to the flesh (omjua or <rap£).
The soul is often subdivided by Philo, according to
Plato’s division, into three parts, which may be
rendered approximately by reason (vovs /cat Aoyos),
spirit (Ovjxos), and appetite (em<9u/ua). Sometimes
perception ( aio-Orjais ), language (Xoyos), and mind

1 See an excellent paper by Dr. Hatch, ‘ Psychological Terms in
Philo/ in Bssays in Biblical Greek , pp. 109-130.

THE LOGOS.

419

(vovs) are said to be tbe three instruments of know-
ledge (De Congr. erud. gr. 18, p. 533). Then again
each part is divided into two. making six, while the
seventh, or he who divides them, is called the holy
and divine Logos (6 lepds ml Beios Xoyos). In other
places Philo adopts the Stoical division of the soul into
seven parts, that is, the five senses, speech and the
reproductive power, but a separate place is reserved
for the sovereign or thinking part (to fjyepioviKov , i. e.
6 vovs), and it is said that God breathed His spirit into
that only, but not into the soul as the assemblage of
the senses, speech and generative power. Hence one
part of the soul, the unintelligent (a koyov), is ascribed
to the blood (al/za), the other to the divine spirit (irvedpa
Belov); one is perishable, the other immortal. The
immortal part was the work of God Himself, the
perishable (as in Plato), that of subordinate powers.
What has been well brought out by Philo, is that the
senses, which in man are always accompanied by
thought, are by themselves passive and dull, and could
present images of present things only, not of past
(memory) or of future things (vovs). It is not the eye
that sees, but the mind (vovs) sees through the
eye, and without the mind nothing would remain of
the impressions made on the senses. Philo also shows
how the passions and desires are really the result of
perception (alorBrjcr is), and its accompanying pleasures
and pains that war against the mind, and he speaks
of the death of the soul, when overcome by the passions.
This, however, can be metaphorical only, for the
higher portion of the soul or the divine spirit breathed
into man by God cannot perish. This divine spirit,
a conception, it would seem, not of Greek origin,

420

LECTUKE XU.

is sometimes spoken of by the Stoic term anoamacriia.
but Philo carefully guards against the supposition that
any portion could ever be detached from the Supreme
Divine Being. He explains it as an expansion from
God, and calls the mind {yovs) which it confers on the
soul of man, the nearest image and likeness of the
eternal and blessed Idea.

• We must not however expect a strictly consistent
terminology in Philo, nor allow ourselves to he
misled when we sometimes find him using mind or
nous in the more general sense of soul (^ux 7 ?)* What
is important to us is that when it is necessary, he
does distinguish between the two. But even then he
hesitates between the philosophical opinion of the
Stoics, that the mind after all is material, though not
made of the four ordinary elements, but of a fifth, the
heavenly ether, and the teaching of Moses that it was
the image of the Divine and the Invisible \

But even if the soul is conceived as material, or
at all events, as ethereal, it is declared to be of
heavenly origin, and believed to return to the pure
ether as to a father 1 2 .

If, on the contrary, the mind is conceived as the
breath (^vevjxa) of God, then it returns to God, or
rather it was never separated from God, but only
dwelt in man. And here again the Biblical idea
comes in, that some chosen men such as prophets are

1 De plantat. Noe, 5 (1, 332) : O l plv akkoi rrjs aldepiov (pvcrem rdv
^ipknpov vov v fJLOipav dirovres dvat, o’vyySveiav dvdpdjTTtp rtpbs aldepa
avrppav' 6 8% p£ya? Mcuvarjs oitSevl tojv yty ovdrcov tt}? Xoyucrjs ifwxfts rb
*180$ dfxotoos &)v6j*aaevy akk* etvev avrrjv rod 0dov ml doparov dtcova.

2 Quis rer. divin. heres, 57 (1, 514) : T<> 81 voepbv ml ovpdviov rijs
ipvyji's yivos irpos aWepa rbv mOapwrarov ojs vpbs irarepa &<pi£erat*

THE LOGOS.

421

full of the divine spirit, and different so far from
ordinary mortals.

Yet with all his admiration for the Logos as of divine
origin, Philo seldom went so far as the Platonists. He
never allowed that the soul even in its highest ecstasy
could actually see God, as little, he says, as the soul
can see itself (De Mut. nom. 2, p. 579). But in every
other respect Reason was to him the supreme power
in the world and in the human mind. If therefore an
Alexandrian philosopher, familiar with Philo's philo-
sophy and terminology, became a Christian, he really
raised Christ to the highest position, short of primary
Divinity, which he could conceive. He declared ipso
facto his belief that the Divine Logos or the Word
was made flesh in Christ, that is to say, he recognised
in Christ the full realisation of the divine idea of
man, and he claimed at the same time for himself
and for all true Christians the power to become the sons
of God. This was expressed in unmistakable language
by Athanasius, when he said that the Logos, the Word
of God, became man that we might be made God,
and again by St. Augustine, Factus est Deus homo,
ut homo fieret Deus 1 . Whatever we may think of
these speculations, we may, I believe, as historians
recognise in them a correct account of the religious
and intellectual ferment in the minds of the earliest
Greek and Jewish converts to Christianity, who, with-
out breaking with their philosophical convictions,
embraced with perfect honesty the religion of Christ.
Three important points were gained by this combina-
tion of their ancient philosophy with their new re-

1 See the remarks of Cusanus, in Bur’s Nicolaus Ousanas, vol. ii.
p. 347.

422

LECTURE XII.

ligion, the sense of the closest relationship between
human and divine nature, the pre-eminent position of
Christ as the Son of God, in the truest sense, and at
the same time the potential brotherhood between Him
and all mankind.

How far this interpretation of the Logos, as we
find it not only in Philo, but among the earliest
converts to Christianity, may be called orthodox, is
not a question that concerns the historian. The word
orthodox does not exist in his dictionary. There is
probably no term which has received so many inter-
pretations at the hands of theologians as that of
Logos, and no verse in the New Testament which
conveys so little meaning to modern readers as the
first in the Gospel of St. John. Theologians are at
liberty to interpret it, each according to his. own
predilection, but the historical student has no choice ;
he must take every word in the sense in which it
was used at the time by those who used it.

Jupiter as Son of God.

That the intellectual process by which the Greek
philosophy adapted itself to the teaching of Christi-
anity was in accordance with the spirit of the time,
is best shown by an analogous process which led Neo-
Platonist philosophers to discover their philosophical
theories in their own ancient mythology also. Thus
Plotinus speaks of the Supreme God generating a
beautiful son, and producing all things in his essence
without any labour or fatigue. For this deity being
delighted with his work, and loving his offspring,
continues and connects all things with himself, pleased
both with himself and with the splendours his off-

THE LOGOS.

423

spring exhibits. But since all these are beautiful and
those which remain are still more beautiful, Jupiter ,
the son of intellect, alone shines forth externally,
proceeding from the splendid retreats of his father.
From which last son we may behold as an image the
greatness of his Sire, and of his brethren, those divine
ideas that abide in occult union with their father 1 .

Here we see that Jupiter, originally the Father of
Gods and men, has to yield his place to the Supreme
Being, and as a phenomenal God to take the place of
the son of God, or as the Logos. This is Greek
philosophy trying to pervade and quicken the ancient
Greek religion, as we saw it trying to be reconciled
with the doctrines of Christianity by recognising the
divine ideal of perfection and goodness as realised in
Christ, and as to be realised in time by all who are
to become the sons of God. The key-note of all these
aspirations is the same, a growing belief that the
human soul comes from God and returns to God,
nay that in strict philosophical language it was never
torn away ( hitocmavixa ) from God, that the bridge
between man and God was never broken, but was
only rendered invisible for a time by the darkness of
passions and desires engendered by the senses and the
flesh.

1 Plotinus, Enneads, II ; Taylor, Platonic Religion , p. 263.

LECTUEE XIII.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

Stoics and Neo-Flatonists.

T TEIED to show in my last lecture how Philo,
as the representative of an important historical
phase of Jewish thought, endeavoured with the help
of Greek, and more particularly of Stoic philosophy,
to throw a bridge from earth to heaven, and how
he succeeded in discovering that like two countries,
now separated by a shallow ocean, these two worlds
formed originally but one undivided continent. When
the original oneness of earth and heaven, of the
human and the divine natures has once been dis-
covered, the question of the return of the soul to
God assumes a new character. It is no longer a
question of an ascension to heaven, an approach to
the throne of God, an ecstatic vision 0/ God and
*a life in a heavenly Paradise. The vision of God
is, rather the knowledge of the divine element in
the soul, and of the consubstantiality of the divine
and human natures. Immortality has no longer to
be asserted, because there can be no death for what
is divine and therefore immortal in man. There
is life eternal and peace eternal for all who feel the

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

425

divine Spirit as dwelling within them and have thus
become the true children of God. Philo has not
entirely freed himself from the popular eschato-
logical terminology. He speaks of the city of God
and of a mystical Jerusalem. But these need not
be more than poetical expressions for that peace of
God which passes all names and all understanding.

Anyhow the eschatological language of Philo is
far more simple and sober than what we meet with
even in Christian writings of the time, in which
the spirit of the Neo-Plat onist philosophy has been
at work by the side of the more moderate traditions
of the Jewish and the Stoic schools of thought. The
chief difference between the Neo-Platonists and the
Stoics is that the Neo-Platonists, whether Christian or
pagan, trust more to sentiment than to reasoning.
Hence they rely much more on ecstatic visions
than Philo and his Stoic friends. On many other
points, however, more particularly on the original
relation between the soul and God, there is little
difference between the two.

Plotinus.

Plotinus, the chief representative of Neo-Platonism
at Alexandria, though separated by two centuries
from Philo, may be called an indirect descendant
of that Jewish philosopher, tie is said to have had
intercourse with Numenius, who followed in the steps
of Philo 3 . But Plotinus went far beyond Philo. His
idealism was carried to the furthest extreme. While
the Stoics were satisfied with knowing that God is,

1 Porphyrins had to write a hook to prove that Plotinus was
not a mere borrower from Numenius.

426

LECTURE XIII.

and with discovering his image in the ideas of the
invisible, and in the manifold species of the visible
world, the Neo-Platonists looked upon the incom-
prehensible and unmanifested Godhead as the highest
goal of their aspirations, nay, as a possible object of
their enraptured vision. When the Stoic keeps at a
reverent distance, the N eo-Platonist rushes in with
passionate love, and allows himself to indulge in
dreams and fancies which in the end could only
lead to self-deceit and imposture. The Stoics looking
upon God as the cause of all that falls within the
sensuous and intellectual experience of man, concluded
that He could not be anything of what is effect,
and that He could have no attributes (fa tolos) through
which He might be known and named. God with
them was simple, without qualities, inconceivable,
unnameable. From an ethical point of view Philo
admitted that the human soul should strive to become
free from the body ( <pvyrj £k tov crco/mro?) and like
unto God ( f} i Tpos deov efo/xouoa-ty). He even speaks
of evtocris, union, but he never speaks of those more
or less sensuous, ecstatic, and beatific visions of the
Deity which form a chief topic of the Neo-Platonists.
These so-called descendants of Plato had borrowed
much from the Stoics, but with all that, the religious
elements predominated so completely in their philo-
sophy that at times the old metaphysical foundation
almost disappeared. While reason and what is rational
in the phenomenal world formed the chief subject of
Stoic thought, the chief interest of the Neo-Platonists
was centered in what is beyond reason. It may be
said that to a certain extent Philo’s Stoicism pointed
already in that direction, for his God also was

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

427

conceived as above the Logos, and his essence remained
unknown ; yet knowledge of the existence of God and
likeness to Him were the highest goal, and refuge with
Him was eternal life 1 . It has therefore been truly
said that the Neo-Platonist differs from the Stoic by
temperament rather than by argument.

The Neo-Platonist. like the Stoic, believes in a Primal
Being, and in an ideal world (row, koo-jjlos votjto y), as the
prototype of the phenomenal world (k 007x09 Spar 6$). The
soul is to him also of divine origin. It is the image
of the eternal JVcms, an immaterial substance, stand-
ing between the A T ous and the visible world. The more
the soul falls away from its source, the more it falls
under the power of what we should call matter, the
indefinite {cnrupov), and the unreal (to prj or). It is
here that philosophy steps in to teach the soul its
way back to its real home. This is achieved by the
practice of virtues, from the lowest to the highest,
sometimes by a very strict ascetic discipline. In the
end, however, neither knowledge nor virtue avail.
Complete self-forgetfulness only can lead the soul to
the Godhead in whose embrace there is ineffable
blessedness. Thus when speaking of the absorption
of man in the Absolute, Plotinus said: ! Perhaps it
cannot even be called an intuition 2 ; it is another
kind of seeing, an ecstasy, a simplification, an exalta-
tion, a striving for contact, and a rest. It is the
highest yearning for union, in order to see, if possible,
what there is in the holiest of the temple. But even
if one could see, there would be nothing to see. By
such similitudes the wise prophets try to give a hint
how the Deity might be perceived, and the wise
1 De Prof. 15 (1, 557). 2 Tholuek, Morgenlandische Mystik , p. 5.

428

LECTURE XI 1 1.

priest, who understands the hint may really, if he
reaches the holiest, obtain a true intuition/ These
intuitions, in which nothing could be seen, were
naturally treated as secrets, and the idea of mystery,
so foreign to all true philosophy, became more and
more prevalent. Thus Plotinus himself says that
these are doctrines which should be considered as
mysteries, and should not be brought before the un-
initiated. Prod us also says, c As the Mystae in the
holiest of their initiations (reXirac) meet first with
a multiform and manifold race of gods, but when
entered into the sanctuary and surrounded by holy
ceremonies, receive at once divine illumination in
their bosom, and like lightly-armed warriors take
quick possession of the Divine, the same thing
happens at the intuition of the One and All. If
the soul looks to what is behind, it sees the shadows
and illusions only of what is. If it turns into its own
essence and discovers its own relations, it sees itself
only, but if penetrating more deeply into the know-
ledge of itself, it discovers the spirit in itself and in
all orders of things. And if it reaches into its inmost
recess, as it were into the Adyton of the soul, it can
see the race of gods and the unities of all things even
with closed eyes.’

Plotinus and his school seem to have paid great
attention to foreign, particularly to Eastern religions
and superstitions, and endeavoured to discover in all of
them remnants of divine wisdom. They even wished
to preserve and to revive the religion of the Roman
Empire. Claiming revelation for themselves, the Neo-
Platonists were all the more ready to accept divine reve-
lations from other religions also, and to unite them all

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

429

Into a universal religion. But what we mean by an
historical and critical study of other religions was
impossible at that time. While Philo with his unwaver-
ing adherence to the Jewish faith was satisfied with
allegorising whatever in the Old Testament seemed
to him incompatible with his philosophical convic-
tions, the Neo-Plat onists accepted everything that
seemed compatible with their own mystic dreams,
and opened the door wide to superstitions even of the
lowest kind. It is strange, however, that Plotinus
does not seem to have paid much attention to the
Christian religion which was then rapidly gaining
influence in Alexandria. But his pupils, Amelius
and Porphyrins, both deal with it. Amelius dis-
cussed the Fourth Gospel. Porphyrius wrote his
work in fifteen books against the Christians, more
particularly against their Sacred Books, which he
calls the works of ignorant people and impostors.
Yet no sect or school counted so many decepti decep-
tores as that of the Neo-Platonists. Magic, thauma-
turgy, levitation, faith-cures, thought-reading, spirit-
ism, and every kind of pious fraud were practised by
impostors who travelled about from place to place,
some with large followings. Their influence was
widely spread and most mischievous. Still we must
not forget that the same Neo-Platonism counted
among its teachers and believers such names also as
the Emperor Julian (331-363), who thought Neo-
Platonism strong enough to oust Christianity and to
revive the ancient religion of Rome ; also, for a time at
least, St Augustine (354-430), Hypatia , the beautiful
martyr of philosophy (d. 415), and Proclus (411-485),
the connecting link between Greek philosophy and

430

LECTURE XIII.

the scholastic philosophy of the middle ages, and with
Dionysius one of the chief authorities of the mediaeval
Mystics. Through Proclus the best thoughts of the
Stoics, of Aristotle, Plato, nay, of the still more ancient
philosophers of Greece, such as Anaxagoras and Hera-
clitus, were handed on to the greatest scholastic and
mystic Doctors in the mediaeval Church ; nay, there
are currents in our own modern theology, which can
be traced back through an uninterrupted channel to
impulses springing from the brains of the earliest
thinkers of Asia Minor and Greece.

Before we leave Plotinus and the N eo-Platonists
I should like to. read j T ou some extracts from a private
letter which the philosopher wrote to Flaccus. Like
most private letters it gives us a better insight into
the innermost thoughts of the writer, and into what
he considered the most important points of his philo-
sophical system than any more elaborate book.

Letter from Plotinus to Flaccus.

f External objects/ he writes, c present us only with
appearances,’ that is to say, are phenomenal only.
Concerning them, therefore, we may be said to possess
opinion rather than knowledge. The distinctions in
the actual world of appearance are of import only to
ordinary and practical men. Our question lies with
the ideal reality that exists behind appearance. How
does the mind perceive these ideas ? Are they without
us, and is the reason, like sensation, occupied with
objects external to itself? What certainty could we
then have, what assurance that our perception was
infallible? The object perceived would be a some-
thing different from the mind perceiving it. We

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

431

should have then an image instead of reality. It
•would be monstrous to believe for a moment that
the mind was unable to perceive ideal truth exactly
as it is, and that we had no certainty and real know-
ledge concerning the world of intelligence. It follows,
therefore, that this region of truth is not to be investi-
gated as a thing outward to us, and so only imperfectly
known. It is within us. Here the objects we con-
template and that which contemplates are identical —
both are thought. The subject cannot surely know
an object different from itself 1 .

The world of ideas lies within our intelligence.
Truth, therefore, is not the agreement of our appre-
hension of an external object with the object itself.
It is the agreement of the mind with itself. Con-
sciousness, therefore, is the sole basis of certainty.
The mind is its own witness. Eeason sees in itself
that which is above itself as its source ; and again,
that which is below itself as still itself once more.

Knowledge has three degrees — opinion , science , illu-
mination . The means or instrument of the first is
sense ; of the second, reason or dialectics ; of the third,
intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is abso-
lute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind
knowing with the object known. There is a raying out
of all orders of existence, an external emanation from
the ineffable One (7 rpoohos). There is again a returning
impulse, drawing all upwards and inwards toward the
centre from whence all came (einoTpoipri).

1 Plotinus, Enneades, 1, 6, 9, to yap opwv irpbs rb opajpevov avyyevh
teal op.oiov TroiTjadpievov Set kmftaXXeiv rfj 9ka. ov yelp av ttujttotg eldev
6(p0aXfxbs rjKtov 7)\co€i8t > }$ /jlt) yeytvrjfjLevos, oi/5e to fcaXov av ? 8 ot ipvxV M
KaXrj yevofxivrj. yeveerdeo 8 % vpa/rov $€ 0 €l 8 t)s rra?, /cal /caXds ira?, d pd AAet
Veavaadai 0 e 6 v re /cal /caXov. Ed. Diibner, p. 37.

432

LECTURE XIII.

Love, as Plato beautifully says in the Symposlon, is
the child of poverty and plenty. In the amorous
quest of the soul after God, lies the painful sense of
fall and deprivation. But that love is blessing, is
salvation, is our guardian genius ; without it the
centrifugal law would overpower us, and sweep our
souls out far from their source toward the cold ex-
tremities of the material and the manifold. The wise
man recognises the idea of God within him. This he
develops by withdrawal into the Holy Place of his
own soul. He who does not understand how the soul
contains the Beautiful within itself, seeks to realise
the beauty without, by laborious production. His
aim should rather be to concentrate and simplify, and
so to expand his being ; instead of going out into the
manifold, to forsake it for the One, and so to float
upwards towards the divine fount of being whose
stream flows within him.

Y ou ask, how can we know the Infinite ? I answer,
not by reason. It is the office of reason to distin-
guish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be
ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend
the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by
entering into a state in which you are your finite self
no longer, in which the Divine Essence is communi-
cated to you. This is ecstasy. It is the liberation of
your mind from its finite anxieties. Like only can
apprehend like. When you thus cease to be finite,
you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction
of your soul to its simplest self (a7r\axn$), its divine
essence, you realise this Union, nay this Identity
(evacns).

ALEXANDKIAN CHRISTIANITY.

433

Ecstatic Intuition.

Plotinus adds that this ecstatic state is not frequent,
that he himself has realised it but three times in his
life. There are different ways leading to ;t : — the
love of beauty which exalts the poet; devotion to
the One, and the ascent of science which makes the
ambition of the philosopher; and lastly love and
prayers by which some devout and ardent soul
tends in its moral purity towards perfection. We
should call these three the Beautiful , the True, and
the Divine, the three great highways conducting
the soul to 'that height above the actual and the
particular, where it stands in the immediate presence
of the Infinite, which shines out as from the depth of
the soul/

We are told by Porphyrius, the pupil and bio-
grapher of Plotinus, that Plotinus felt ashamed that
his soul should ever have had to assume a human
body, and when he died, his last words are reported
to have been ; c As yet I have expected you, and now
I consent that my divine part may return to that
Divine Nature which flourishes throughout the
universe/ He looked upon his soul as Empedocles
had done long before him, when he called himself,
'Heaven's exile, straying from the orb of light,
staying, but returning/

Alexandrian Christianity. St. Clement.

It was necessary to give this analysis of the
elements which formed the intellectual atmosphere
of Alexandria in order to understand the influence
which that atmosphere exercised on the early growth
(4) F£

434

LECTURE XIII.

of Christianity in that city. Whatever progress
Christianity made at Jerusalem among people who
remained for a long time more Jewish than Christian,
its influence on the world at large began with the
conversion of men who then represented the world,
who stood in the front rank of philosophical thought,
who had been educated in the schools of Greek
philosophy, and who in adopting Christianity as their
religion, showed to the world that they were able
honestly to reconcile their own philosophical convic-
tions with the religious and moral teaching of Jesus
of Nazareth. Those who are truly called the Fathers
and Founders of the Christian Church were not the
simple-minded fishermen of Galilee, but men who had
received the highest education which could be obtained
at the time, that is Greek education. In Palestine
Christianity might have remained a local sect by the
side of many' other sects. In Alexandria, at that time
the very centre of the world, it had either to vanquish
the world, or to vanish. Clement of Alexandria,
Origen, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa,
Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, or among the
Latin Fathers, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrosius, Hila-
rius, Augustinus, Hieronymus, and Gregory, all were
men of classical learning and philosophical culture,
and quite able to hold their own against their pagan
opponents. Christianity came no ^oubt from the
small room in the house of Mary, where many were
gathered together praying 1 , but as early as the
second century it became a very different Christianity

1 St. Clement, when he speaks of his own Christian teachers,
speaks of them as having preserved the true tradition of the
blessed doctrine, straight from Peter and James, John and Paul.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

435

In the Catechetical School 1 of Alexandria. Si Paul
had made a beginning as a philosophical apologete of
Christianity and as a powerful antagonist of pagan
beliefs and customs. But St. Clement was a very
different champion of the new faith, far superior to
him both in learning and in philosophical strength.
The profession of Christianity by such a man was
therefore a far more significant fact in the triumphant
progress of the new religion than even the conversion
of Saul. The events which happened at Jerusalem,
the traditions and legends handed down in the earliest
half Jewish and half Christian communities, and even
the earliest written documents did not occupy the
mind of St. Clement 2 so much as the fundamental
problems of religion and their solution as attempted
by this new sect. He accepted the Apostolical tradi-
tions, but he wished to show that they possessed to him
a far deeper meaning than they could possibly have
possessed among some of the immediate followers of
Christ. There was nothing to tempt a man in Clement’s
position to accept this new creed. Nothing but the
spirit of truth and sincere admiration for the character
of Christ as conceived by him, could have induced
a pagan Greek philosopher to brave the scoffs of bis
philosophical friends and to declare himself a follower
of Christ, and a member of a sect, at that time still
despised and threatened with persecution. He felt
convinced, however, that this new religion, if properly
understood, was worthy of being accepted by the most
enlightened minds. This proper understanding was
what Clement would have called yv&cns, in the best sense

1 Strom, i. T, 11 ; Harnaek, JDogmengeschichie , i. p. 301, not©.

2 Harnaek, Dogmengeschichte , i. p. 300.

Ff 2

436

LECTURE XIII.

of the word. The Catechetical School where Clement
taught had been under the guidance of Greek philoso-
phers converted to Christianity , such as Athenagoras (?)
and Pantaenus. Pantaenus, of whom it is related that
he discovered a Hebrew version of the Gospel of
St. Matthew in India \ had been the master of Clement.
His pupil, in openly declaring himself a Christian and
an apologete of Christianity, surrendered nothing of
his philosophical convictions. On one side Christian
teachers were representing Greek philosophy as the
work of the Devil, while others, such as the Ebionites.
assigned the Old Testament to the same source. In the
midst of these conflicting streams St. Clement stood firm.
He openly expressed his belief in the Old Testament
as revealed, and he accepted the Apostolical Dogma, so
far as it had been settled at that time. He claimed,
however, the most perfect freedom of interpretation
and speculation. By applying the same allegorical
interpretation which Philo had used in interpreting
the Old Testament, to the New, Clement convinced
himself and convinced others that there was no an-
tagonism between philosophy and religion. What
Clement had most at heart was not the letter but the
spirit, not the historical events, but their deeper mean-
ing in universal history.

The Trinity of St. Clement.

It can hardly be doubted 2 that St. Clement knew the
very ancient Baptismal Formula, ‘In the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost’ from the Gospel
of St. Matthew.

1 Bigg, l.c., p. 44.

2 See, however, Harnack, Bogmengeschichte^ i. p. S02, note.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

437

But whether that formula came to him with ecclesias-
tical authority or not, it would not have clashed with
his own convictions. He had accepted the First
Person, the Father, not simply as the Jehovah of the
Old Testament or as the Zeus of Plato, but as the
highest and most abstract philosophical concept, and
yet the most real of all realities. He would not have
ascribed to God any qualities. To him also God was
clttoioS) like the primal Godhead of the Stoics and Neo-
Platonists. He was incomprehensible and unnameable.
Yet though neither thought nor word could reach
Him, beyond asserting that He is, Clement could
revere and worship Him.

One might have thought that the Second Person, the
Son, would have been a stumbling-block to Clement.
But we find on the contrary that Clement, like all con-
temporary Greek philosophers, required a bridge be-
tween the world and the unapproachable and ineffable
Godhead. That bridge was the Logos, the Word. Even
before him, Athenagoras l , supposed to have been his
predecessor at the Catechetical School of Alexandria,
had declared that the Logos of the Father was the Son of
God. Clement conceived this Logos in its old philo-
sophical meaning, as the mind and consciousness of
the Father. He speaks of it as ‘ divine, the likeness of
the Lord of all things, the most manifest, true God V

The Logos, though called the sum of all divine
ideas 3 , is distinguished from the actual logoi, though
sometimes represented as standing at the head of them.
This Logos is eternal, like the Father, for the Father

3 urummona, x.c., j

1 Not/s feed XSyos rov irarpbs 5 vibs rod 9eov. See .

p. 48. „ ,

2 &H09, b (pavepWTCLTQS OVTCtiS 0€<5s, O TCp beeftTOTTf TCi/V oXOfV e£uTQ)$€l$»

3 Bigg, l,c., p. 92.

438

LECTUEE XIII.

would never have been the Father without the Son,
nor the Son the Son without the Father. Such
ideas were shared in common by the Christians and
their pagan adversaries. Even Celsus, the great op-
ponent of Christianity, says through the mouth of
the Jew, ‘If the Logos is to you a Son of God, we
also agree with you V

The really critical step which Clement took, and
which philosophers like Celsus declined to take, was
to recognise this Logos in Jesus of Nazareth. It was
the same process as that which led the Jewish con-
verts to recognise the Messiah in J esus. It is not quite
certain whether the Logos had been identified with
the Messiah by the Jews of Alexandria 2 . But when
at last this step was taken it meant that everything
that was thought and expected of the Messiah had
been fulfilled in Jesus. This to a Jew was quite as
difficult as to recognise the Logos in Jesus was to a
Greek philosopher. How then did St. Clement bring
himself to say that in a Jewish Teacher whom he had
#ever seen the Logos had become flesh? All the
epithets, such as Logos, Son of God, the first-born, the
only begotten, the second God, were familiar to the
Greeks of Alexandria. If then they brought them-
selves to say that He, Jesus of Nazareth, was all that.
If they transferred all these well-known predicates -
to Him, what did they mean? Unless we suppose
that the concept of a perfect man is in itself impos-
sible, it seems to me that they could only have meant
that a perfect man might be called the realisation of
the Logos, whether we take it in its collective form,

1 'O? €iye 6 Aoyos early vpt.iv vibs rod 6eov t feed tfpteis eiraivodftev.
Harnack, l.c., i. p. 423, 609. 2 Bigg, l.c., p. 25, note.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

439

as it was in the beginning with God, or in its more
special sense, as the logos or the original idea or the
divine conception of man. If then all who knew Jesus
of Nazareth, who had beheld His glory full of grace
and truth, bore witness of Him as perfect, as free from
all the taints of the material creation, why should not
the Greek philosophers have accepted their testimony,
and declared that He was to them the Divine Word,
the Son of God, the first-born, the only-begotten, mani-
fested in the flesh ? Human language then, and even
now, has no higher predicates to bestow. It is the
nearest approach to the Father, who is greater even
than the Word, and I believe that the earliest Fathers
of the Church and those who followed them, bestowed
it honestly, not in the legendary sense of an Evange-
lism infantiae , but in the deepest sense of their
philosophical convictions. Here is the true historical
solution of the Incarnation, and if the religion of the
Incarnation is pre-eminently 'a religion of experi-
ence/ here are the facts and the experience on which
alone that religion can rest.

We saw that Philo, whose language St. Clement
uses in all these discussions, had recognised his Logos
as present in such prophets as Abraham and Moses ;
and many have thought that St. Clement meant no
more when he recognised the Word as incarnate in
the Son of Mary (Strom, vii. 2). But it seems to me
that Clement’s mind soared far higher. To him the
whole history of the world was a divine drama, a long
preparation for the revelation of God in man. From
the very beginning man had been a manifestation of
the Divine Logos, and therefore divine in his nature.
Why should not man have risen at last to his full

440

LECTURE XIII.

perfection, to be what he had been meant to be from
the first in the counsel of the Father? We often
speak of an ideal man or of the ideal of manhood,
without thinking what we mean by this Platonic
language. Ideal has come to mean not much more
than very perfect. But it meant originally the idea in
the mind of God, and to be the ideal man meant to be
the man of God, the man as thought and willed by
Divine Wisdom. That man was recognised in Christ
by those who had no inducement to do violence to
their philosophical convictions. And if they could do
it honestly, why cannot we do it honestly too, and
thus bring our philosophical convictions into perfect
harmony with our historical faith ?

It is more difficult to determine the exact place
which St. Clement would have assigned to the Third
Person, the Holy Ghost.

The first origin of that concept is still enveloped in
much uncertainty. There seems to be something
attractive in triads. We find them in many parts of
the world, owing their origin to very different causes.
The trinity of Plato is well known, and in it there is
a place for the third person, namely, the World-spirit,
of which the human soul was a part. Numenius 1 ,
from whom, as we saw, Plotinus was suspected to
have borrowed his philosophy, proposed a triad or, as
some call it, a trinity, consisting of the Supreme, the
Logos (or Demiurge), and the World. With the
Christian philosophers at Alexandria the concept of
the Deity was at first biune rather than triune.
The Supreme Being and the Logos together compre-
hended the whole of Deity, and we saw that the
1 Bigg, l.c., p. 251.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

441

Logos or the intellectual world was called not only the
Son of God, but also the second God (bevrepo $■ Qeos).
When this distinction between the Divine in its abso-
lute essence, and the Divine as manifested by its own
activity, had once been realised, there seemed to be no
room for a third phase or person. Sometimes there-
fore it looks as if the Third Person was only a repeti-
tion of the Second. Thus the author of the Shepherd 1
and the author of the Acta Archelai both identify
the Holy Ghost with the Son of God. How unsettled
the minds of Christian people were with regard to
the Holy Ghost, is shown by the fact that in the
apocryphal gospel of the Hebrews Christ speaks of it
as His Mother 2 . When, however, a third place was
claimed for the Holy Spirit, as substantially existing
by the side of the Father and the Son, it seems quite
possible that this thought came, not from Greek, but
from a Jewish source. It seems to be the Spirit which
‘ in the beginning moved upon the face of the waters/
or ‘the breath of life which God breathed into the
nostrils of man.' These manifestations of God, how-
ever, would according to Greek philosophers have fallen
rather to the share of the Logos. Again, if in the New
Testament man is called the temple of God, God and
the Spirit might have been conceived as one, though
here also the name of Logos would from a Greek point
of view have been more appropriate to any manifesta-
tion of the Godhead in man. In His last discourse Christ
speaks of the Holy Ghost as taking His place, and as in
one sense even more powerful than the Son. We are
told that the special work of the Spirit or the Holy
Spirit is to produce holy life in man, that while God

1 Harnack, l.e,, i. p. 623. 2 Renan, Les Evcengiles, pp. 103, 185.

442

LECTURE XIII.

imparts existence, the Son reason (logos), the Holy
Ghost imparts sanctification 1 . Clement probably ac-
cepted the Holy Ghost as a more direct emanation or
radiation proceeding from the Father and the Son in
their relation with the human soul. For while the
Father and Son acted on the whole world, the influence
of the Holy Ghost was restricted to the soul of man. It
was in that sense that the prophets of the Old Testa-
ment were said to have been filled with the Spirit of
God ; nay, according to some early theologians Jesus
also became the Christ after baptism only, that is,
after the Holy Ghost in the shape of a dove had
descended upon Him.

The difficulties become even greater when we re-
member that Si Clement speaks of the Father and the
Logos as substances (hypostaseis), sharing the same
essence (ousia), and as personal, the Logos being
subordinate to the Father as touching His manhood,
though equal to the Father as touching His godhead.
We must remember that neither the Logos nor the
Holy Ghost was taken by him as a mere power (hvva\ u.l$)
of God, but as subsisting personally 2 . Now it is quite
true that personality did not mean with St. Clement
what it came to mean at a later time. With him
a mythological individuality, such as later theologians
clamoured for, would have been incompatible with the
true concept of deity. Still self-conscious activity
would certainly have been claimed by him for every
one of the three Persons, and one wonders why he
should not have more fully expressed which particular
activity it was which seemed to him not compatible

1 Bigg, p. 174.

2 Harnack, l.c., i. p. 581, 1. 17.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

443

either with the Father or with the Logos, but to
require a separate Person, the Holy Ghost.

It afterwards was recognised as the principal func-
tion of the Holy Ghost to bring the world, and more
particularly the human soul, back to the consciousness
of its divine origin, and it was a similar function which
He was believed to have exercised even at the baptism
of Christ \ at least by some of the leading author-
ities in the fourth and fifth centuries, Theodore of
Mopsuestia, Nestorius, and others.

The problem, however, which concerns us more imme-
diately, the oneness of the human and divine natures,
is not affected by these speculations. It forms the
fundamental conviction in St. Clement s, as in P hil o’s
mind. If, in order to bring about the recognition of
this truth, a third power was wanted, St. Clement
would find it in the Holy Ghost. If it was the Holy
Ghost which gave to man the full conviction of his
divine sonship, we must remember that this recon-
ciliation between God and man was in the first
instance the work of Christ, and that it had not
merely a moral meaning, but a higher metaphysical
purpose. If St. Clement had been quite consistent, he
could only have meant that the human soul received
the Holy Spirit through Christ, and that through the
Holy Spirit only it became conscious of its true divine
nature and mindful of its eternal home. We some-
times wish that St. Clement had expressed himself
more fully on these subjects, more particularly on his
view of the relation of man to God, to the Logos, and
to the Holy Spirit.

On his fundamental conviction, however, there can
1 Harnack, l.c., i. pp, 91, 639.

444

LECTURE XITX.

be no uncertainty. It was Clement wbo 5 before St.
Augustine, declared boldly that God became man in
Christ in order that man might become God. Clement
is not a confused thinker, but he does not help the
reader as much as he might, and there is a certain
reticence in his conception of the Incarnation which
leaves us in the dark on several points. Dr. Bigg 1
thinks indeed that Clement’s idea of the Saviour is
larger and nobler than that of any other doctor of the
Church. ‘ Clement’s Christ/ he says, £ is the Light that
broods over all history, and lighteth up every man that
cometh into the world. All that there is upon earth
of beauty, truth, goodness, all that distinguishes the
civilised man from the savage, and the savage from
the beast, is His gift/ All this is true, and gives to the
Logos a much more historical and universal meaning
than it had with Philo. Yet St. Clement never
clearly explains how he thought that all this took
place, and how more particularly this universal Logos
became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, while it was at
the same time pervading the whole world and every
living soul ; also what was according to him the exact
relation of the Logos to the Pneuma.

There are several other questions to which I can-
not find an answer in St. Clement, but it is a subject
which I may safely leave to other and more competent
hands.

It may be said that such thoughts as we have dis-
covered in St. Clement are too high for popular
religion, and every religion, in order to be a religion,
must be popular. Clement knew this perfectly well.
But the philosophical thoughts in which he lived were
1 Lx., p. 72.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY. 445

evidently more widely spread In his time than they
are even with us ; and in the case of babes, Clement
Is quite satisfied that their Logos or Christ should be
simply the Master, the Shepherd, the Physician, the
Son of Mary who suffered for them on the cross.
Besides, there was the Church which acted both as a
guide and as a judge over all its members, particularly
those who had not yet found the true liberty of the
children of God. If Clement considers this as the
Lower Life, still it leads on to the Higher Life, the
life of knowledge and righteousness, the life of love,
the life in Christ and in God. That purity of life is
essential for reaching this higher life is fully understood
by Clement. He knew that when true knowledge
has been obtained, sin becomes impossible. 'Good
works follow knowledge as shadow follows substance 1 /
Knowledge or Gnosis is defined as the apprehensive
contemplation of God in the Logos. When Clement
shows that this knowledge is at the same time love of
God and life in God, he represents the same view
which we met with in the Vedanta, in contradis-
tinction from the doctrine of the Sufis. That love of
God, he holds, must be free from all passion and desire
(anadrjs ) ; it is a contented self-appropriation which
restores him who knows to oneness with Christ, and
therefore with God. The Vedantist expressed the
same conviction when he said that. He who knows
Brahma, is Brahma (Brahmavid Brahma bhavati).
That is the true, serene, intellectual ecstasis, not the
feverish ecstatic visions of Plotinus and his followers.
Clement has often been called a Gnostic and a Mystic,
yet these names as applied to him have a very different
1 Strom, viii. 13, 82.

446

LECTUEE XIII.

meaning from what they have when applied to Plo-
tinus or Jamblietms. With all his boldness of thought
St. Clement never loses his reverence before the real
mysteries of life. He never indulges in minute de-
scriptions of the visions of an enraptured soul during
life, or of the rejoicings or the sufferings of the soul
after death. All he asserts is that the soul will for
ever dwell with Christ, beholding the Father. It will
not lose its subjectivity, though freed from its terres-
trial personality. It will obtain the vision of the
Eternal and the Divine, and itself put on a divine
form (( rxviJta ddov). It will find rest in God by know-
ledge and love of God.

Origen,

I cannot leave this Alexandrian period of Chris-
tianity without saying a few words about Origen.
To say a few words on such a man as Origen may
seem a very useless undertaking ; a whole course of
lectures could hardly do justice to such a subject.
Still in the natural course of our argument we cannot
pass him over. What I wish to make quite clear to
you is that there is in Christianity more theosophy
than in any other religion, if we use that word in its
right meaning, as comprehending whatever of wisdom
has been vouchsafed to man touching things divine.
We are so little accustomed to look for philosophy
in the New Testamant that we have almost acquiesced
in that most unholy divorce between religion and
philosophy ; nay, there are those who regard it almost
as a distinction that our religion should not be bur-
dened with metaphysical speculations like other reli-
gions. Still there is plenty of metaphysical speculation

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

447

underlying the Christian religion, if only we look for
it as the early Fathers did. The true height and depth
of Christianity cannot be measured unless we place it
side by side with the other religions of the world.
We are hardly aware till we have returned from
abroad that England is richer in magnificent cathe-
drals than any other country, nor shall we ever
appreciate at its full value the theosophic wealth of
the Christian religion, quite apart from its other ex-
cellences, till we have weighed it against the other
religions of the world. But in doing this we must
treat it simply as one of the historical religions of the
world. It is only if we treat it with the perfect
impartiality of the historian that we shall discover its
often unsuspected strength.

I hope I have made it clear to you that from the
very first the principal object of the Christian religion
has been to make the world comprehend the oneness
of the objective Deity, call it J ehovah, or Zeus, or Theos,
or the Supreme Being, to oz/, with the subjective Deity,
call it self, or mind, or soul, or reason, or Logos.
Another point which I was anxious to establish was
that this religion, when it meets us for the first time
at Alexandria as a complete theological system, repre-
sents a combination of Greek, that is Aryan, with
Jewish, that is Semitic thought, that these two primeval
streams after meeting at Alexandria have ever since
been flowing on with irresistible force through the
history of the world.

Without these Aryan and Semitic antecedents
Christianity would never have become the Religion of
the world. It is necessary therefore to restore to Chris-
tianity its historical character by trying to discover

448

LECTURE XIII.

and to understand more fully its historical antecedents.
It was Hegel, I believe, who used to say that the dis-
tinguishing characteristic of the Christian religion was
that it was non-historical, by which he meant that it
was without historical antecedents, or, as others would
say, miraculous. It seems to me on the contrary that
what constitutes the essential character of Christian-
ity is that it is so thoroughly historical, or coming,
as others would say, in the very fulness of time. It
is difficult to understand the supercilious treatment
which Christianity so often receives from historians
and philosophers, and the distrust with which it is re-
garded by the ever-increasing number of the educated
and more or less enlightened classes. I believe this
is chiefly due to the absence of a truly historical treat-
ment, and more particularly to the neglect of that most
important phase in its early development, with which
we are now concerned. I still believe that by vindi-
cating the true historical position of Christianity, and
by showing the position which it holds by right among
the historical and natural religions of the world, with-
out reference to or reliance upon any supposed special ,
exceptional , or so-called miraculous revelation , I may
have fulfilled the real intention of the founder of this
lectureship better than I could have done in any other
way.

Though I cannot give you a full account of Origen
and his numerous writings, or tell you anything new
about this remarkable man, still I should have been
charged with wilful blindness if, considering what
the highest object of these lectures is, I had passed
over the man whose philosophical and theological
speculations prove better than anything else what in

ALEXANDBIAN CHRISTIANITY.

449

this, my final course of lectures, I am most anxious to
prove, viz. that the he all and the end all of true
religion is to reunite the bond between the Divine and
the Human which had been severed by the false reli-
gions of the world.

On several points Origen is more definite than
St. Clement. He claims the same freedom of interpreta-
tion, and yet he is far more deeply impressed with the
authority of the Rule of Faith, and likewise with
the authority of the Scriptures, known to him, than
St. Clement 1 . Origen had been bom and bred a
Christian, and he was more disposed to reckon with
facts, though always recognising a higher truth
behind and beyond the mere facts. He evidently
found great relief by openty recognising the dis-
tinction between practical religion as required for the
many (xptcrrtartcr/xos a-co/xcm/cos) and philosophical truth
as required by the few (xpio-r Lav torpids tt reu/xariKo's).

After admitting that every religion cannot but
assume in the minds of the many a more or less
mythological form, he goes on to ask, £ but what
other way could be found more helpful to the many,
and better than what has been handed down to the
people from J esus ? 5 Still even then, when he meets
with anything in the sacred traditions that conflicts
with morality, the law of nature or reason, he protests
against it, and agrees with his Greek opponent that God
cannot do anything against his own nature, the Logos,
against his own thought and will, and that all miracles
are therefore in a higher sense natural 2 * * . A mere miracle,

1 Harnack, 1. e,, i. p. 573.

2 Contra Celsum, v. 23’ ; Bigg, 1. c,, p. 263 ; Harnack, i. p. 566,

note ; Orig. in Joan. ii. 28.

( 4 ) G g

450

LECTUEE XIII.

in the ordinary acceptation of the term, would from
his point of view have been an insult to the Logos
and indirectly to the Deity. That the tempter should
have carried Christ bodily into a mountain Origen
simply declared impossible. His great object was
everywhere the same, the reconciliation of philosophy
with religion, and of religion with philosophy. Thus
he says that a Greek philosopher, on becoming ac-
quainted with the Christian religion, might well,
by means of his scientific acquirements, reduce it to
a more perfect system, supply what seems deficient,
and thus establish the truth of Christianity 1 . In
another place he praises those who no longer want
Christ simply as a physician, a shepherd, or a ransom,
but as wisdom, Logos, and righteousness. Well
might Porphyrius say of Origen that he lived like a
Christian and according to the law, but that with
regard to his views about things and about the
Divine, he was like a Greek 2 . Still it was the
Christian Doctrine which was to him the perfection
of Greek philosophy 3 , that is to say the Christian
Doctrine in the light of Greek philosophy.

Origen w’as certainly more biblical in his perfect
Monism than Philo. He does not admit matter by
the side of God, but looks upon God as the author
even of matter, and of all that constitutes the material
world. God’s very nature consists in His constant
manifestation of Himself in the world by means of
the Logos, whether we call it the thought, the will, or
the word of God. According to Origen, this Logos

1 Contra Celsum, i. 2. 2 Eusebius, H. E., vi. 19.

3 Harnack, 1. p. 562, note.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY. 451

in all its fulness was manifested in Christ as the
perfect image of God. He is called the second
God ( bevrepos 6eos), the Son, being of the same sub-
stance as the Father (opoovcnos rw 7rarp[) t He is
also called the wisdom of God. but as subsisting
substantially by itself (sapient-ici clei substantiuliter
subsistens ), and containing all the forms of the
manifold creation, or standing between the One
Uncreate on one side and the manifold created things
on the other 1 . If then this Logos, essentially divine
(ofjioovcrios rep 0e<p), is predicated of Christ, we can
clearly perceive that with Origen too this was really
the only way in which he could assert the divinity
of Christ. There was nothing higher he could have
predicated of Christ. Origen was using the term
Logos in the sense in which the word had been
handed down to him from the author of the Fourth
Gospel through Tatian, Athenagoras, Pantaenus, and
Clement. Every one of them held the original
unity of all spiritual essences with God. The Logos
was the highest of them, but every human soul also
was orginally of God and was eternal. According to
Origen the interval between God and man is filled
with an unbroken series of rational beings (naturae
rationabiles), following each other according to their
dignity. They all belong to the changeable world
and are themselves capable of change, of progress,
or deterioration. They take to some extent the place
of the old Stoic logoi, but they assume a more
popular form under the name of Angels. The Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost belong to the eternal and
unchangeable world, then follow the Angels ac-

1 Harnaek, i. p. 582-3.

Org 2

452

LECTURE XIII.

cording to their different ranks, and lastly the human
soul.

With regard to the Third Person, Origen, like
St. Clement, had never, as Prof. Harnack remarks
(i. p. 583), achieved an impressive proof of the inner
necessity of this hypostasis ; nay it was not settled
yet in his time whether the Holy Ghost was create
or uncreate, whether it should be taken for the Son
of God or not. Nevertheless Origen accepted the
Trinity, but with the Father as the full source of its
divinity (Trrjyrj rrj? O^drrjros) ; nay he speaks of it as
the mystery of all mysteries, whatever this may mean.

All human souls were supposed by Origen to
have fallen away, and as a punishment to have
been clothed in flesh during their stay in the material
world. But after the dominion of sin in the material
world is over, the pure Logos was to appear, united
with a pure human soul, to redeem every human
soul, so that it should die to the flesh, live in the
spirit, and share in the ultimate restoration of all
things. Some of these speculations may be called
fanciful, but the underlying thought represented at
the time the true essence of Christianity. It was in
the name of the Christian Logos that Origen was
able to answer the Logos aleth.es of Celsus ; it was
in that Sign that Christianity conquered and re-
conciled Greek philosophy in the East, and Roman
dogmatism in the West. ^

The Alog-oi.

But though this philosophy based on the Logos, the
antecedents of which we have traced back to the great
philosophers of Greece, enabled men like St. Clement

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

453

and Origen to fight their good fight for the new faith,
it must not he supposed that this philosophical defence
met with universal approval. As Origen saw himself*
it was too high and too deep for large numbers who had
adopted the Christian religion for other excellences
that appealed to their heart rather than to their
understanding. Thus we hear in the middle of the
second century 1 of an important sect in Asia Minor,
called the Alogoi. This seems to have been a nick-
name, meaning without a belief in the Logos 2 , but
also absurd. These Alogoi would have nothing to do
with the Logos 3 of God, as preached by St. John.
This shows that their opposition was not against
St. Clement and Origen, whose writings were probably
later than the foundation of the sect of the Alogoi,
but against the theory of the Logos as taught or
fully implied in the Gospel ascribed to St. John. The
Alogoi were not heretics ; on the contrary, they were
conservative, and considered themselves thoroughly
orthodox. They were opposed to the Montanists and
Chiliasts ; they accepted the three Synoptic Gospels,
but for that very reason rejected the Gospel ascribed to
St. John, and likewise the Apocalypse. They denied
even that this Gospel was written by St. John, because
it did not agree with the other Apostles 4 , nay they
went so far as to say that this Gospel ascribed to John

1 Harnack, L c., p. 617, note.

2 Thus St. John, the author of the Apocalypse, was called
Theologos, because he maintained the divinity of the Logos. See
Natural Religion, p. 46.

3 Epiphanius, 51. S. 28 : k6yov rod 0€ov airofiakkovTai rbv

’Icoawrjv KrjpvxBivra.

4 Epiph. 81. 4 : <f>a<Ttcov<jL ort ob avjxcpcovei ra @i@kia tov ’laavvov rais

kOUTOLS CLTTOGTOkOlS.

454

LECTURE XIII.

lied and was disordered \ as it did not say the same
things as the other Apostles. Some ascribed the Fourth
Gospel to the Judaising Gnostic Cerinthus, and de-
clared that it should not be used in church 1 2 .

This is an important page in the history of early
Christianity. It shows that in the second half of the
second century the four Gospels, the three Synoptic
Gospels and that of St. John had all been recognised
in the Church, but that at the same time it was
still possible to question their authority without in-
curring ecclesiastical censure, such as it was at the
time. It shows also how thoroughly the doctrine of
the Logos was identified with St. John, or at least
with the author of the Fourth Gospel, and how it
was his view of Christ, and the view defended by
Barnabas, Justin, the two Clements, Ignatius, Poly-
carp 3 , and Origen, which in the end conquered the
world. Still, if it was possible for a Pope to make
St. Clement descend from his rightful place among
the Saints of the Christian Church, what safety
is there against another Pope unsainting St. John
himself 4 i

Though the further development of the Logos theory
in the East and the West is full of interest, we must
not dwell on it any further. To us its interest is
chiefly philosophical, while its later development
becomes more and more theological and scholastic.
What I wished to prove was that the Christian religion

1 EpipR. 51. 18 : evayy iXtov rb els bvojxa ‘’Icaavvov ipevderai . . .
Xeyovat rb Kara S I wLvvr\v evayy eXiov, kneiSr} (xi) rd avrd rois diroffrSXoLS
e<p7} } ddia$ero% etvai.

a Ovk a£ia avra cpacrtv ehai ev kfcf£\r}(riq.

s Hamack, i. pp. 162, note ; 422, note.

4 Bigg, 1. c., p. 272.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY. 455

in its first struggle -with the non-Christian thought of
the world, owed its victory chiefly, if not entirely, to
the recognition of what, as we saw, forms the essential
element of all religion, the recognition of the closest
connexion between the phenomenal and the noumenal
worlds, between the human soul and God. The bond
of union between the two, which had been discovered
by slow degrees by pagan philosophers and had been
made the pivot of Christian philosophy at Alexandria,
was the Logos. By the recognition of the Logos in
Christ, a dogma which gave the direst offence to
Celsus and other pagan philosophers, the fatal divorce
between religion and philosophy had been annulled,
and the two had once more joined hands. It is
curious however to observe how some of the early
Apologetes looked upon the Logos as intended rather
to separate God 1 from the world than to unite the
two. It is true that Philo's mind was strongly
impressed with the idea that the Divine Essence
should never be brought into immediate contact with
vile and corrupt matter, and to him therefore the
intervening Logos might have been welcome as pre-
venting such contact. But Christian philosophers
looked upon matter as having been created by God,
and though to them also the Logos was the intervening
power by which God formed and ruled the world,
they always looked upon their Logos as a con-
necting link and not as a dividing screen. It is true
that in later times the original purpose and nature
of the Logos were completely forgotten and changed.
Instead of being a bond of union between the human
and the Divine, instead of being accepted in the sense

1 Harnack, i. p. 443.

456

LECTURE XIII.

which, the early Fathers had imparted to it as consti-
tuting the divine birthright of every man born into the
world, it was used once more as a wall of partition
between the Divine Logos, the Son of God (povoyeify
vlb$ rov 0€ov), and the rest of mankind ; so that not only
the testimony of St. John, but the self-evident meaning
of the teaching of Christ was made of no effect.
No doubt St. Clement had then to be unsainted,
but why not St. Augustine, who at one time was
a great admirer of St* Clement and Origen, and
who had translated and adopted the very words of
St. Clement, that God became man in order that man
might become God 1 . Not knowing the difference
between deos and 6 deos, God and the God, later divines
suspected some hidden heresy in this language of St.
Clement and St. Augustine, and in order to guard
against misapprehension introduced a terminology
which made the difference between Christ and those
whom He called His brothers, one of kind and not one
of degree, thus challenging and defying the whole of
Christ’s teaching. Nothing can be more cautious
yet more decided than the words of St. Clement 2 :
‘ Thus he who believes in the Lord and follows the
prophecy delivered by Him is at last perfected accord-
ing to the image of the Master, moving about as God
in the flesh 3 / And still more decided is Origen’s
reply to Celsus iii. 28 : r That human nature through
its communion with the more Divine should become
divine not only in Jesus, but in all who through faith

1 See "before, p. 323.

2 See Bigg, 1. c., p. 75.

3 Ovrm r<p Kvplcp iruGSficvos kclI ry 8o0€i<T7} di avrov KaTaKoXovG-qaas

irpo<pT}T(sla kfcreXeirat tear’ dtcSva rov Sidaff/caXov Iv crapfd iteptiroKm

Geos. Clem. Strom, viii. 16, 95.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

45 7

take up the life which Jesus taught 1 / It is clear
that Origen, taking this view of human nature, had
no need of any other argument in support of the
true divinity of Christ. He might as well have tried
to prove his humanity against the Docetae. With him
both were one and could only be one. To Origen
Christ’s divinity was not miraculous, or requiring any
proof from moral or physical miracles. It was in-
volved in his very nature, in his being the Logos or
the Son of God in all its fulness, whereas the Lotros
in man had suffered and had to be redeemed by the
teaching by the life and death of Christ-. While
Origen thus endeavoured to reconcile Greek philo-
sophy, that is, his own honest convictions, with the
teaching of the Church, he kept clear both of
Gnosticism and Doeetism. Origen was as honest as
a Christian as he was as a philosopher, and it was
this honesty which made Christianity victorious in
the third century, and will make it victorious again
whenever it finds supporters who are determined
not to sacrifice their philosophical convictions to their
religious faith or their religious faith to their philo-
sophical convictions.

It is true that like St. Clement, Origen also was
condemned by later ecclesiastics, who could not
fathom the depth of his thoughts ; but he never in the
whole history of Christianity was without admirers
and followers. St. Augustine, St. Bernard, the author
of Be Imitatione, Master Eckhart, Tauler, and others,
honoured his memory, and Dr. Bigg is no doubt right

1 "lv 17 dvOpwmvT] tt} 1 Tptis rd Beiorepov Koivajvtq. ycvrjrai Beta ovfc ev
fjiovcxf T : Tjaov d\\d teal irdm tols fiera tov marevety dva\ajjL$dvovcH
fiiov bv 'hjerovs eStda£ev.

2 Harnack, i. p. 594.

458

LECTURE XIIT.

in saying 1 £ That there was no truly great man in the
Church who did not love him a little/ And why £ a
little only’ ? Was it because he was disloyal to the
truth such as he had seen it both in philosophy and
in religion ? Was it because he inflicted on himself
such suffering as many may disapprove, but few will
imitate m jxakkov rj fjujj,rjO‘€rai) f l If we con-

sider the time in which he lived, and study the
testimony which his contemporaries bore of his
character, we may -well say of him as of others who
have been misjudged by posterity :

4 Deim wer den Besten seiner Zeit genug gethan,

Der liat gelebt fiir alle Zeiten/

1 L. c.j p. 279.

LECTURE XIV.

DIONYSIUS THE AEEOPAGITE.

T&e Logos in tlie Latin ClrarclL,

H AVING shown, as I hope, that in the earliest
theological representation of Christianity which
we find in the Alexandrian Fathers of the Church, the
most prominent thought is the same as that of the
Vedanta, how to find a way from earth to heaven, ox-
still better how to find heaven on earth, to discover
God in man and man in God, it only remains to show
that this ancient form of Christianity, though it was
either not understood at all or misunderstood in later
ages, still maintained itself under varying forms in
an uninterrupted current from the second to the nine-
teenth century.

We can see the thoughts of St. Clement and Origen
transplanted to the Western Church, though the very
language in which they had to be clothed obscured
their finer shades of meaning. There is no word in
Latin to convey the whole of the meaning of Logos ;
again the important distinction between Geos and o
Geos is difficult to render in a language which has no
articles. The distinction between ousia and hypostasis
was difficult to express, and yet an inaccurate rendering

460

LECTURE XIV.

might at once become heresy. St. J erome 1 who had
all his life used the expression tres personae , com-
plained bitterly that because he would not use the
expression ires substantiae , he was looked at with
suspicion. 4 Because we do not learn the (new) words,
we are judged heretical.'

TerttUlian.

We have only to read what Latin Fathers — for in-
stance, Tertullian — say about Christ as the Logos, in
order to perceive at once how the genius of the Latin
language modifies and cripples the old Greek thought.
When Tertullian begins (Apolog. cap. xxi) to speak
about Christ as God, he can only say Be Christo ut Deo .
This might be interpreted as if he took Christ to be
6 0€O9, and predicated of Him the hypostasis of the
Father, which is impossible. What he means to pre-
dicate is the ousia of the Godhead. Then he goes on:
4 We have already said that God made this universe
Verbo, et JRatione , et Virtute , that is by the Word, by
Reason, by Power.' He has to use two words verbum
and ratio to express Logos. Even then he seems to feel
that he ought to make his meaning clearer, and he adds :
4 It is well known that with you philosophers also Logos,
that is Speech (sermo), and Reason (ratio), is con-
sidered as the artist of the universe. For Zeno defines
him as the maker who had formed everything in order,
and says that he is also called Fate, God, and the
mind of God, and the necessity of all things. Cleanthes
comprehends all these as Spirit which, as he asserts,
pervades the universe. We also ascribe to Speech,
Reason, and Power (sermo, ratio 3 et virtus ), through
which, as we said, God made everything, a proper
1 Biographies of Words , p. 43.

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE.

461

substance, the Spirit 1 , who as Word issues the fiat (of
creation), as Reason gives order to the universe, and
as Power carries his work on to a complete perfection' 2 .
We have learnt that he was brought out from God,
and generated by prolation, and was therefore called
Son of God and God, from the unity of the substance.
For God is Spirit, and when a ray is sent forth from
the sun, it is a portion from the whole, but the sun
will be in the ray, because the ray is the sun’s ray,
not separated from it in substance, but extended.
Thus comes Spirit from Spirit, and God from God,
like a light lit from a light/

We see throughout that Tertullian (lfO-2-f 0) wishes
to express what St. Clement and Origen had expressed
before him. But not having the Greek tools to work
with, his verbal picture often becomes blurred. The
introduction of Spiritus, which may mean the divine
nature, but is not sufficiently distinguished from
pneuma , logos, the divine Word, and from the spiritus
sanctus , the Holy Ghost, confuses the mind of the
readers, particularly if they were Greek philosophers,
accustomed to the delicately edged Greek terminology.

Dionysius tlie Areopagite.

It would no doubt be extremely interesting to
follow the tradition of these Alexandrian doctrines,
as they were handed down both in the West and in the
East, and to mark the changes which they experienced
in the minds of the leading theological authorities in
both Churches. But this is a work far beyond my
strength. All that I feel still called upon to do is

1 Kay© explains that spirit has hero the meaning of Divine nature ;
but, if so, the expression is very imperfect.

2 TerMliani Apohgetwu s adversus Genies, ed. Bindley, p. 7 4, note.

462

LECTUBE XIV.

to attempt to point out how, during the centuries
which separate us from the first five centimes of our
era, this current of Christian thought was never en-
tirely lost, but rose to the surface again and again at
the most critical periods in the history of the Christian
religion. Unchecked by the Council of Nicaea (325),
that ancient stream of philosophical and religious
thought flows on, and we can hear the distant echoes
of Alexandria in the writings of St. Basil (329-379),
Gregory of Nyssa (332-395), Gregory of Nazianz
(328-389), as well as in the Works of St. Augustine
(364-430). In its original pagan form Neo-Platonism
asserted itself once more through the powerful advo-
cacy of Proclus (411-485), while in its Christian form
it received about the same time (500 A. D. ?) a most
powerful renewed impulse from a pseudonymous
writer, Dionysius the Areopagite. I must devote
some part of my lecture to this writer on account of
the extraordinary influence which his works acquired
in the history of the mediaeval Church. He has often
been called the father of Mystic Christianity, which
is only a new name for Alexandrian Christianity in
one of its various aspects, and he has served for cen-
turies as the connecting link between the ancient and
the mediaeval Church. No one could understand the
systems of St. Bernard (1091-1153) and Thomas
Aquinas (1224—1274) without a knowledge of Diony-
sius. No one could account for the thoughts and the
very language of Master Eckhart (1260-1329) without
a previous acquaintance with the speculations of that
last of the Christian Neo-Platonists. Nay, Gerson
(1363-1429), St. Theresa (1515-1582), Molinos (1640-
1687), Mad. de Guyon (1648-1717), all have been

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE.

463

touched by his magic wand. Few men have achieved
so wide and so lasting a celebrity as this anon\ incus
writer, and, we must add, with so little to deserve it.
Though Dionysius the Areopagite is often represented
as the founder of Christian mysticism, I must con-
fess that after reading Philo, St. Clement, and Origen,
I find very little in his writings that can be called
original.

Writing's of Dionysius.

It is well known that this Dionysius the Areo-
pagite is not the real Dionysius who with Damaris
and others clave unto St. Paul after his sermon on
Areopagus. Of him we know nothing more than what
we find in the Acts. But there was a Christian Neo-
Platonist who, as Tholuck has been the first to show,
wrote about 500 a. d. The story of his book is very
curious. It has often been told ; for the last time by
the present Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott, in his
thoughtful Essays on the History of Religious Thought
in the West, published in 1891. I chiefly follow him
and Tholuck in giving you the following facts. The
writings of Dionysius were referred to for the first
time at the Conference held at Constantinople in 533
A. d., and even at that early time they were rejected
by the orthodox as of doubtful authenticity. Naturally
enough, for who had ever heard before of Dionysius,
the pupil of St. Paul, as an author ? Even St. Cyril
and Athanasius knew nothing yet about any writings
of bis, and no one of the ancients had ever quoted
them. But in spite of all this, there was evidently
something fascinating about these writings of Diony-
sius the Areopagite. In the seventh century they
were commented on by Maximius (died 662); and

464

LECTURE XIV.

Photius in his Bibliotheca (c. 845) mentions an essay
by Theodoras, a presbyter, written in order to defend
the genuineness of the volume of St. Dionysius.
We need not enter into these arguments for and
against the genuineness of these books, if what is
meant by genuineness is their being written by
Dionysius the Areopagite in the first century of our
era. I even doubt whether the author himself ever
meant to commit anything like a fraud or a forgery h
He was evidently a Neo-Platonist Christian, and his
book was a fiction, not uncommon in those days, just
as in a certain sense the dialogues of Plato are fictions,
and the speeches of Thucydides are fictions, though
never intended to deceive anybody. A man at the
present day might write under the name of Dean
Swift, if he wished to state what Dean Swift would
have said if he had lived at the present moment.
Why should not a Neo-Platonist philosopher have
spoken behind the mask of Dionysius the Areopagite,
if he wished to state what a Greek philosopher would
naturally have felt about Christianity. It is true
there are some few touches in the writings ascribed
to Dionysius which were meant to give some local
colouring and historical reality to this philosophical
fiction ; but even such literary artifices must not be
put down at once as intentional fraud. There is, for
instance, a treatise Be Vita Contemplativa , which is
ascribed to Philo. But considering that it contains a
panegyric on asceticism as practised by the Thera-
peutai in Egypt, it is quite clear that it could never
have been written by Philo Judaeus. It was probably
written by a Christian towards the end of the third

1 See the remarks of Renan, in Les jtvangiles, p. 159.

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE.

465

or the beginning of the fourth century. If for some
unknown reason the author wrote under the name of
Philo, this literary artifice could hardly have taken
in any of his contemporaries, if indeed it was ever
meant to do so \

But whatever the object of the writer may have
been, whether honest or dishonest, certain it is that
he found a large public willing to believe in the
actual authorship of Dionysius the Areopagite. The
greatest writers of the Greek Church accepted these
books as the real works of the Areopagite. Still
greater was their success in the West. They were
referred to by Gregory the Great (c. 600), and
quoted by Pope Adrian I in a letter to Charles the
Great.

The first copy of the Dionysian writings reached
the West in the year 827, when Michael, the stam-
merer, sent a copy to Louis I, the son of Charles.
And here a new mystification sprang up. They were
received in the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, by the
Abbot Hilduin. They arrived on the very vigil of
the feast of St. Dionysius, and, absurd as it may
sound, Dionysius the Areopagite was identified with
St. Denis, the Apostle of France, the patron saint
of the Abbaye of St. Denis ; and thus national pride
combined with theological ignorance to add still
greater weight and greater sanctity to these Diony-
sian writings in France.

Translation by Scotns Erig’ena.

The only difficulty was how to read and translate
1 Lucius, Die Therapeuten , Strassburg, 1880. Kuenen, Hibbert Leo

466

LECTUBE XIV.

them. France at that time was not rich in Greek
scholars, and the language of Dionysius is by no
means easy to understand. Hilduin, the abbot of
St. Denis, attempted a translation, but failed. The
son of Louis, Charles the Bald, was equally anxious
to have a Latin translation of the writings of St.
Denis, the patron saint of France, and he found at
last a competent translator in the famous Scotus
Erigena, who lived at his court. Scotus Erigena was
a kindred spirit, and felt strongly attracted by the
mystic speculations of Dionysius. His translation
must have been made before the year 861, for in that
year Pope Nicholas I complained in a letter to Charles
the Bald that the Latin translation of Dionysius had
never been sent to him for approval. A copy was
probably sent to Rome at once, and in 865 we find
Anastasius, the Librarian of the Roman See, addressing
a letter t _> Charles, commending the wonderful trans-
lation made by one whom he calls the barbarian
living at the end of the world, that is to say, Scotus
Erigena, whether Irishman or Scotchman. Scotus
was fully convinced that Dionysius was the contem-
porary of St. Paul, and admired him both for his
antiquity and for the sublimity of the heavenly
graces which had been bestowed upon him.

As soon as the Greek text and the Latin transla-
tion had become accessible, Dionysius became the
object of numerous learned treatises. Albertus Magnus
and Thomas Aquinas were both devoted students of his
works, and never doubted their claims to an apostolic
date. It was not till the revival of learning that
these claims were re-examined and rejected, and re-
jected with such irresistible evidence that people

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE.

467

•wondered how these compositions could ever have
been accepted as apostolic. We need not enter into
these arguments. It is no longer heresy to doubt
their apostolical authorship or date. No one doubts
at present that the writer was a Neo-Platonist Chris-
tian, as Tholuck suggested long ago, and that he
lived towards the end of the fifth century, probably
at Edessa in Syria. But though deprived of their
fictitious age and authorship, these writings retain
their importance as having swayed the whole of
mediaeval Christianity more than any other book,
except the New Testament itself. They consist of
treatises (1) on the Heavenly Hierarchy, (2) on the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, (3) on the Divine Names,
(4) on Mystical Theology. There are other books
mentioned as his, but now lost \ They are most
easily accessible now in the Abbe Migne’s edition
(Paris, 1857).

The Influence of the Dionysian Writing's.

If we ask how it was that these books exercised so
extraordinary a fascination on the minds of the most
eminent theologians during the Middle Ages, the prin-
cipal reason seems to have been that they satisfied a
want which exists in every human heart, the want of
knowing that there is a real relation between the
human soul and God. That want was not satisfied
by the Jewish religion. It has been shown but lately
by an eminent Scotch theologian, what an impassable
gulf the Old Testament leaves between the soul and
God. And though it was the highest object of the
teaching of Christ, if properly understood, to bridge

1 See Harnack, L c., vol. ii. p. 426, note.

H h 2

468

LECTURE XIV.

that gulf, it was not so understood by the Jewish
Christians who formed some of the first and in some re-
spects most important Christian communities. Diony-
sius set boldly to work to construct, if not a bridge,
at least a kind of Jacob’s ladder between heaven and
earth ; and it was this ladder, as we shall see, that
appealed so strongly to the sympathy of his numerous
followers.

No doubt the idea that he was the contemporary of
St. Paul added to his authority. There are several
things in his works which would hardly have been
tolerated by the orthodox, except as coming from the
mouth of an apostolic teacher. Thus Dionysius affirms
that the Hebrews were in no sense a chosen people
before the rest, that the lot of all men is equal, and
that God has a like care for all mankind. It is a
still bolder statement of Dionysius that Christ before
His resurrection was simply a mortal man, even in-
ferior, as it were, to the angels, and that only after
the resurrection did He become at once immortal man
and God of all. There are other views of at all events
doubtful orthodoxy which seem to have been tolerated
in Dionysius, but would have provoked ecclesiastical
censure if coming from any other source.

Sources of Dionysius.

It must not be supposed, however, that Dionysius
was original in his teaching, or that he was the first
who discovered Greek, more particularly Neo-Pla-
tonist ideas, behind the veil of Christian doctrines.
Dionysius, like the early Eleatic philosophers, starts
from the belief in God, as the absolute Being, rb ov ,
the conscious God as absolutely transcendent, as the

DIONYSIUS THE AKEOPAGITE. 469

cause which is outside its effects, and jet multiplies
itself so as to he dynamically present in every one of
them. This multiplication or this streaming forth of
the Deity is ascribed to Love (Ipco?) within God, and
is supposed to he carried out according to certain
designs or types ( 'npoopio-fioi , 7rapadeLyfj,ara), that is to
say, not at random, but according to law or reason. In
this we can recognise the Stoic logoi and the Platonic
ideas, and we shall see that in their intermediary
character they appear once more in the system of
Dionysius under the name of the Hierarchies of
angels. The soul which finds itself separated from
God by this manifold creation has but one object,
namely to return from out the manifoldness of created
things to a state of likeness and oneness with God
(cMpofjLoiaxrLs, €z/a) 07 , 9 , dioxris). The chasm between the
Deity and the visible world is filled by a number of
beings which vary in name, but are always the same
in essence. Dionysius calls them a Hierarchy. St.
Clement had already used the same term \ when he
describes c the graduated hierarchy like a chain of iron
rings, each sustaining and sustained, each saving and
saved, and all held together by the Holy Spirit, which
is Faith/ Origen is familiar with the same idea, and
Philo tells us plainly that what people call angels are
really the Stoic logoi 2 .

The Daimones.

We can trace the same idea still further back. In
Hesiod, as we saw, and in Plato’s Timaeus, the chasm
between the two worlds was filled with the Daimones.
In the later Platonist teaching these Daimones became

1 Bigg, 1. e., p. 68. 3 See pp. 406, 473, 478.

470

LECTURE XIV.

more and more systematised. They were supposed to
perform all the work which is beneath the dignity of
the impassive Godhead. They create, they will, and
rule everything. Some of them are almost divine,
others nearly human, others again are demons in the
modern sense of the word, spirits of evil. Many of the
ancient mythological gods had to accept a final resting-
place among these Daimones. This theory of Daimones
supplied in fact the old want of a bridge between God
and man, and the more abstract the idea of God be-
came in the philosophy of the Platonists, the stronger
became their belief in the Daimones. The description
given of them by Maximus Tyrius, by Plutarch and
others, is often most touching, and shows deep religious
feeling.

Thus Apuleius, De Deo Socratico, 674, writes : f Plato
and his followers are blameless if, conceiving that the
purely spiritual and emotionless nature of God pre-
cluded Him from direct action upon this world of
matter, they imagined a hierarchy of beneficent beings,
called Daimones, partaking of the divine nature by
reason of their immortality, and of human nature by
reason of their subjection to emotions, and fitted
therefore to act as intermediaries between earth and
heaven, between God and man/

Maximus, the Tyrian (Diss. xiv. 5), describes these
Daimones as a link between human weakness and
divine beauty, as bridging over the gulf between
mortal and immortal, and as acting between gods and
men as interpreters acted between Greeks and bar-
barians. He calls them secondary gods (8eol hevrepoi),
and speaks of them as the departed souls of virtuous
men, appointed by God to overrule every part of

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE. 471

human life, by helping the good, avenging the injured,
and punishing the unjust. They are messengers of
unseen things, ayyekoi t&v a<fiav&v ; and Plutarch, too,
calls them messengers or angels between gods and
men, describing them as the spies of the former, wan-
dering at their commands, punishing wrong-doers, and
guarding the course of the virtuous (Cessation of
oracles, 33 ; Face in the orb of the moon, 30).

Origen points out that the angels were sometimes
spoken of as gods in the Psalms (c. Cels. v. 4).
but when challenged by Celsus why Christians do not
worship the Daimones, and particularly the heavenly
luminaries, he answers that the sun himself and the
moon and the stars pray to the Supreme God through
His only-begotten Son, and that therefore they think
it improper to pray to those beings who themselves
otter prayers to God (v fxvovfiiv ye deov ml tqv M ovoyevi\
avrody c. Cels. v. 11 ; viii. 67).

Celsus, who doubts everything that does not admit
of a philosophical justification, is nevertheless so con-
vinced of the reality and of the divine goodness of the
Daimones that he cannot understand why the Chris-
tians should be so ungrateful as not to worship them.

There is an honest ring in an often-quoted passage
of his in which he exhorts the Christians not to
despise their old Daimones :

* Every good citizen/ he says, * ought to respect the
worship of his fathers. And God gave to the Dai-
mones the honour which they claimed. Why then
should the Christians refuse to eat at the table of the
Daimones ? They give us corn and wine and the very
air we breathe ; we must either submit to their benefits
or quit the world altogether. All that is really im-

472

LECTURE XIV.

portant in Christianity is the belief in the immortality
of the soul, and in the future blessedness of the good,
the eternal punishment of the wicked. But why not
swear by the Emperor, the dispenser of all temporal
blessings, as God of all spiritual'? Why not sing a
paean to the bright Sun or Athene, and at any rate
kiss the hand to those lower deities who can do us
harm if neglected? It cannot be supposed that the
great Boman Empire will abandon its tried and an-
cient faith for a barbarous novelty ( l i. e. Christianity)/

Plutarch expresses the same strong faith in the
Daimones, when he says :

‘He who denies the Daimones, denies providence
and breaks the chain that unites the world with the
throne of God/

We can well understand, therefore, that those among
the Platonists who had become Christians, required
something to fill the empty niches in them hearts,
which had formerly been occupied by the Greek
Daimones. In order to bring the Supreme Godhead
into contact with the world, they invented their own
Daimones, or rather gave new names to the old.
St. Clement speaks glibly of the gods, but he declares
that all the host of angels and gods are placed in sub-
jection to the Son of God 2 .

Even St. Augustine does not hesitate to speak of
the gods who dwell in the holy and heavenly habita-
tion, but he means by them, as he says, angels and
rational creatures, whether thrones or dominations or
principalities or powers.

1 Bigg, p. 266.

2 Strom, vii. 2, 3 : ©eoi tt)v Trpocrrjyopiav kSkXijvtcu ol crvvBpovoi rwv
dXXcov &$wv vttq to> 'Xojrrjpi, rrpwrov reraypevoov yevrjcropevoi.

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE.

478

We saw that when the logoi had been conceived as
one, the Logos was called the Son of God* the first
begotten or even the only begotten. When conceived
as many, the same logoi had been spoken of as Angel*
by Philo, and as Aeons by the Gnostics b They were
now represented as a hierarchy by Dionysius. This
hierarchy, however, has assumed a very different cha-
racter from that of the Aristotelian logoi. The Stoics
saw in their logoi an explanation of created things,
of trees, animals, and fishes, or of universal elements*
not only water, earth, fire, and air, but heat and cold,
sweetness and bitterness, light and darkness, etc. The
Platonists, and more particularly the Neo-Platonisfc
Christians, had ceased to care for these things. It was
not the origin and descent of species, but the ascent
of the human soul that principally occupied their
thoughts. The names which were given to these
intermediate creations which had come forth from
God, which had assumed a substantial existence by
the side of God, nay after a time had become like
personal beings, were taken from the Bible, though it
is difficult to understand on what principle, if on any.
Origen already had spoken of Angels, and Thrones,
and Dominions, Princedoms, Virtues, and Powers, and
of an infinite stairway of worlds, on which the souls
were perpetually descending and ascending till they
reached final union with God.

1 These Aeons of Valentinian were, as Dr. Bigg, p. 27, truly re-
marks, the ideas of Plato, seen through the fog of an Egyptian or
Syrian mind. Aeon was probably taken originally in the sense of
age, generation, then world. Our own word world meant originally
‘age of men/ saeculum .

474

LECTURE XIV.

Influence of Dionysius during- the Middle Ages.

What puzzles the historian is why Dionysius, who
simply arranges these ancient thoughts without adding
much, if anything, of his own, should have become the
great authority for Theosophy or Mystic Christianity
during the whole of the Middle Ages. He is quoted
alike by the most orthodox of schoolmen, and by the
most speculative philosophers who had almost ceased
to be Christians. His first translator, Scotus Eri-
gena, used him as a trusted shield against his own
antagonists. Thomas Aquinas appeals to him on
every opportunity, and even when he differs from
him treats him as an authority, second only to the
Apostles, if second even to them.

Tlie System of Dionysius.

One explanation is that he saw that all religion,
and certainly the Christian, must fulfil the desire of
the soul for God, must in fact open a return to
God. Creation, even if conceived as emanation only,
is a separation from God ; salvation therefore, such as
Christianity promises to supply, must be a return to
God, who is all in all, the only true existence in all
things. Dionysius tries to explain how a bright and
spiritual light goes forth and spreads throughout all
creation from the Father of light. That light, he says,
is one and entirely the same through all things, and
although there is diversity of objects, the light remains
one and undivided in different objects, so that, without
confusion, variety may be assigned to the objects,
identity to the light.

All rational creatures who have a capacity for the
divine nature are rarefied by the marvellous shining

DIONYSIUS THE AEEOPAGITE. 475

of the heavenly light, lightened and lifted up closely
to it, nay made one with it. In this great happiness
are all those spiritual natures which we call an ' 'els, on
whom the light is shed forth in its untempered purity.

Put as lor men, who are clogged by the heavy ma'-s
of the body, they can only receive a kind of terns' ored
light through the ministry of the angels, till at last
they find truth, conquer the flesh, strive after tin-
spirit, and rest in spiritual truth. Thus the all-mer-
ciful God recalls degraded men and restores them to
truth and light itself.

But Dionysius is not satisfied with these broad out-
lines, he delights in elaborating the minute and to our
mind often very fantastic details of the emanation of
the divine light.

He tells us how there are three triads, or nine
divisions in the celestial hierarchy. Possibly these
three Triads may have been suggested by the three
triads of Plato which we discussed in a former
Lecture. In the first triad there are first of all the
Seraphim, illumined by God Himself, and possessing
the property of perfection. Then follow the Cherubim
as illumined 'and taught by the Seraphim, and pos-
sessing the property of illumination. The third place
in the first triad is assigned to the Thrones, or stead-
fast natures who are enlightened by the second order,
and distinguished by purification.

Then follow in succession the Dominations, the
Virtues, and the Powers, and after that, the Princi-
palities, the Archangels, and Angels. These nine
stations are all minutely described, but in the end
their main object is to hand down and filter, as it were,
the divine light till it can be made fit for human beings.

476

LECTUEE XIV.

Human beings are below the angels, but if properly
enlightened they may become like angels, nay like
gods. Partial light was communicated by Moses,
purer light by Christ, though His full light will shine
forth in heaven only. There the true Son is with
the Father. The Father is the beginning from which
are all things. The Son is the means through which
all things are beautifully ordered, the Holy Ghost is
the end by which all things are completed and per-
fected. The Father created all things because He is
good — this is the old Platonic idea — and because He
is good, He also recalls to Himself all things according
to their capacity.

However much we may agree with the general drift
of this Dionysian theology, some of these details seem
extremely childish. And yet it is these very details
which seem to have taken the fancy of generation
after generation of Christian teachers and preachers
and their audiences. To the present day the belief
of the Church in a hierarchy of angels and their
functions is chiefly derived from Dionysius.

Milman on Dionysius.

The existence of this regular celestial hierarchy
became, as Milman (vi. 405) remarks, an admitted
fact in the higher and more learned theology. The
schoolmen reason upon it as on the Godhead itself:
in its more distinct and material outline it became
the vulgar belief and the subject of frequent artistic
representation. Milman writes:

‘The separate and occasionally discernible being
and nature of seraphim and cherubim, of archangel
and angel, in that dim confusion of what was thought

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE.

477

revealed in the Scripture, and what was sanctioned
by the Church— of image and reality, this Oriental
half-Magian, half-Talmudic, but now Christianised
theory, took its place, if with less positive authority,
with hardly less unquestioned credibility, amid the
rest of the faith. 5

Dr. Milman suggests with a certain irony that what
made this celestial hierarchy so acceptable to the
mediaeval clergy, may have been the corresponding
ecclesiastical hierarchy. Dionysius in his Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy proceeded to show that there was another
hierarchy, reflecting the celestial, a human and ma-
terial hierarchy, communicating divine light, purity,
and knowledge to corporeal beings. The earthly
sacerdotal order had its type in heaven, the celestial
orders their antitype on earth. As there was light,
purity, and knowledge, so there were three orders of
the earthly hierarchy, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons ;
three Sacraments, Baptism, the Eucharist, the Holy
Chrism ; three classes, the Baptised, the Communi-
cants, the Monks. The ecclesiastical hierarchies
themselves were formed and organised after the
pattern of the great orders in heaven. The whole
worship of man, which they administered, was an
echo of that above; it represented, as in a mirror,
the angelic or superangelic worship in the empyrean.
All its splendour, its lights, its incense, were but the
material symbols, adumbration of the immaterial,
condescending to human thought, embodying in
things cognisable to the senses of man the adoration
of beings close to the throne of God.

There may be some truth in Milmans idea that
human or rather priestly vanity was flattered by all

478

LECTUEE XIV.

this 1 ; still we can hardly account in that way for the
enormous' success of the Dionysian doctrine in the
mediaeval Church.

Beal Attraction of Dionysius.

The real fascination lay, I believe, deepen It
consisted in the satisfaction which Dionysius gave
to those innate cravings of the human soul for union
with God, cravings all the stronger the more the mere
externals of religion and worship occupied at the time
the minds of priesthood and laity. Not that this
satisfaction could not have been found in the Gospels,
if only they had been properly searched, and if the
laity had been allowed even to read them. But it
was dogma and ceremonial that then preoccupied the
Church.

The Fifth Century.

As Dr. Westeott says, the ecclesiastical and civil
disorders of the fifth century had obscured the highest
glories of the Church and the Empire. Hence the
chords touched on by Dionysius found a ready re-
sponse in all truly religious minds, that is, in minds
longing for the real presence of God, or for a loving
union with God. This is what Dionysius promised to
them. To him everything finite was a help towards
the apprehension of the Infinite ; and though human
knowledge could never rise to a knowledge of the
absolute, it might show the way to a fellowship
with it. The highest scope with Dionysius was

1 Even on this point Dionysius is not original. He had been
anticipated by St. Clement, who writes (Strom, vi. 13), i Since,
according to my opinion, the grades here in the Church of bishops,
presbyters, and deacons are imitations of the angelic glory/

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE.

479

assimilation to, or union with God 1 . In order to
reach this union the truly initiated have to be released
from the objects and the powers of sight before they
can penetrate into the darkness of unknowledge
(ayi'wcria). The Initiated is then absorbed in the
intangible and invisible, wholly given up to that
which is beyond all things, and belonging no longer
to # himself nor to any other finite being, but in virtue
of some nobler faculty united with that which is
wholly unknowable, by the absolute inoperation of
all limited knowledge, and known in a manner
beyond mind by knowing nothing (Westcott, 1. c.,
p. 185). This is called the mystic union when the
soul is united with God, not by knowledge, but by
the devotion of love. Here was the real attraction of
the Dionysian writings, at least with many Christians
who wanted more from religion than arid dogma, more
than vain symbols and ceremonies from the Church.

It is difficult for us to imagine what the religious
state of the laity must have been at that time. It is
true they were baptised and confirmed, they were
married and buried by the Church. They were also
taught their Creeds and prayers, and they were invited
to attend the spectacular services in the ancient
cathedrals. But if they asked why all this was
so, whence it came and what it meant, they would not
easily have found an answer. We must remember
that the Bible was at that time an almost inaccessible
book, and that laymen were not encouraged to study
it. The laity had to be satisfied with what had been
filtered through the brain of the clergy, and what was
considered by the Church the best food for babes.

1 Westcott, 1. c, pp. 157, 159, 161.

480

LECTURE XIY.

Any attempt to test and verify this clerical teaching
would have been considered sinful. The clergy again
were often without literary cultivation, and certainly
without that historical and philosophical training
that would have enabled them to explain the theo-
logical teaching of St. John in its true sense, or to
explain in what sense Christ was called the Son of
God, and mankind believed capable of Divine sonship,
Christianity became altogether legendary, and instead
of striving after a pure conception of Christ, as the
Son of God, Popes and Cardinals invented immaculate
conceptions of a very different character. And that
which is the source of all religion in the human heart,
the perception of the Infinite, and the yearning of the
soul after God, found no response, no satisfaction
anywhere. How Christianity survived the fearful
centuries from the fifth to the ninth, is indeed
a marvel. Both clergy and laity seem to have led
God-forsaken lives, but it was to these very centuries
that the old German proverb applied, —

<When pangs are highest
Then God is nighest.’

Nearness to God, union with God, was what many
souls were then striving for, and it was as satisfying
that desire that the teaching of Dionysius was welcome
to the clergy and indirectly to the laity.

Five Stages of Mystic TJnion.

The mystic union of which Dionysius treats, was not
anything to be kept secret, it was simply what the
Neo-Platonists had taught as the last and highest
point of their philosophy and their religion. They

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE.

481

recognised a number of preliminary stages, such as
purification (mOapai ?), illumination (< pcorurpo '?), and
initiation (/Averts), which in the end led to unification
with God (eVtotm) and deification (Qiao-is), a change
into God. Sometimes a distinction was made between
oneness {ev^ens) and likeness (o^oiWt*), but in the
case of likeness with God, it would be difficult to
explain any difference between likeness and oneness,
between what is god-like, and what is godly.

Mysteries.

If there was an initiation (fivijais), it must not be
supposed that there was anything secret or mysterious
in this preparation for the highest goal. The Henosis
or union with the One and All was no more of a secret
than was the teaching of St. Paul that we live and
move and have our being in God. All that was meant
by initiation was preparation, fitness to receive the
Higher Knowledge. Still, many of the Fathers of
the Church who had been brought up in the schools
of Neo-Platonist philosophers, spoke of the union
of the soul with God as a mystical union, and as a
mystery. Thus Origen (c. Celsum, 1. 1, c. 7) says that
though Christianity was more widely spread than
any , other philosophy, it possesses certain things
behind the exoteric teaching which are not readily
communicated to the many. St. Basil distinguishes
in Christianity between Kr\pvypara , what is openly
proclaimed, and boypara, which are kept secret. Those
who had been baptised were sometimes spoken of as
jdfjrai or enlightened, as distinguished

from the catechumens, just as in the Greek mysteries
a distinction was made between the initiated and the
G) Ii

482

LECTURE XI Y.

exoterics. The Lord’s Supper more particularly, was
often spoken of as a great mystery, but though it was
called a mystery, it was not a secret in the ordinary
sense. Clement denies expressly that the Church
possesses any secret doctrines (bihaxas a\ka$ airop-
prirovs 1 ), though, no doubt, he too would have held
that what is sacred must not be given to dogs.
What may be called the highest mystery is at the
same time the highest truth, whether in Christianity
or in Neo-Platonism, namely the foam? or feAtixn?,
the perfect union with God. Thus Macarius (c. 330)
says in his Homilies (xiv. 3) : ‘ If a man surrender
his hidden being, that is his spirit and his thoughts,
to God, occupied with nothing else, and moved by
nothing else, but restraining himself, then the Lord
holds him worthy of the mysteries in much holiness
and purity, nay, He offers Himself to him as divine
bread and spiritual drink. 5

It is this so-called mystery which forms the highest
object of the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite.
He also admits certain stages, as preliminary to the
highest mystery. They are the same as those of the
Neo-Platonists, beginning with Kadapais , purification,
and ending with Oiaxrts and &cocris, that is, deification,
union with God, or change into God 2 . We shall
now understand better why he calls that union
mystic and his theology mystic theology.

Mystic and Scholastic Theology.

It seems to me that it was the satisfaction which
Dionysius gave to this yearning of the human heart

1 Bigg, pp. 57, 140.

2 We want a word like the German Vergottung , which is as different
from Vergottmmg as dtaxns is from awe 6 icoa is.

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE.

483

after union with God, far more than the satisfaction
which he may have given to ecclesiastical vanity,
which explains the extraordinary influence which he
acquired both among the laity and the clergy. After
his time the whole stream of theological knowledge
may be said to have rolled on in two parallel channels,
one the Scholastic, occupied with the definition of
Christian doctrines and their defence, the other the
Mystic , devoted to the divine element in man; or
with what was called the birth of Christ within the
soul. The Christian mystics, so far as their funda-
mental position was concerned, argued very much like
the Vedantists and Eleatic philosophers. If we believe
in the One Being, they said, which causes and deter-
mines all things, then that One Being must be the
cause and determination of the human soul also, and
it would be mere illusion to imagine that our being
could in its essence be different from that of God.
If, on the contrary, man is in his essence different from
the One fundamental and Supreme Being, self-deter-
mined and entirely free, then there can be no infinite
God, but we should have to admit a number of Gods,
or divine beings, all independent of the One Being, yet
limited one by the other. The Christian Mystics
embraced the former alternative, and in this respect
differed but little from the Neo-Platonists, though they
looked for and found strong support for their doctrines
in the New Testament, more particularly in the
Gospel ascribed to St. John and in some of the
Epistles of St. Paul. The Christian mystic theo-
logians were most anxious to establish their claim to
be considered orthodox, and we see that for a long
time Dionysius continued to be recognised as an

484

LECTURE! XIV.

authority by the most orthodox of Divines. Thomas
Aquinas, the angelic doctor, to quote the words of
his editor, drew almost the whole of his theology from
Dionysius, so that his witikl is but the hive, as he
says, in whose varied cells he stored the honey which
he gathered from the writings of Dionysius (Westcott,

1. c., p. 144).

Mysticism, and Christian Mysticism.

In our days I doubt whether the mysticism of
Dionysius would be considered as quite orthodox.
Dr. Tholuck, a most orthodox theologian and a great
admirer of the mystic poetry of the East and the \\ est,
draws a broad distinction between a mystic and a
Christian mystic. He defines a mystic ‘ as a man,
who, conscious of his affinity with all that exists from
the Pleiades to the grain of dust, merged in the divine
stream of life that pours through the universe, but
perceiving also that the purest spring of God bursts
forth in his own heart, moves onward across the
world which is turned towards what is limited and
finite, turning his eye in the centre of his own soul to
the mysterious abyss, where the infinite flows into the
finite, satisfied in nameless intuition of the sanctuary-
opened within himself, and lighted up and embraced
by a blissful love of the secret source of his own being
(p. 20). ‘ In his moral aspect,’ Dr. Tholuck adds, 1 the

life of such a mystic is like a mirror of water, moved
by an all-powerful love within, and disquieted by
desire, yet restraining the motion of its waves, in
order to let the face of the sun reflect itself on a
motionless surface. The restless conflicts of se -
hood are quieted and restrained by love, so that the

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGTTE.

485

Eternal may move freely in the motionless soul, and
the life of the soul may be absorbed in the law of
God.’ Even this language sounds to our ears some-
what extravagant and unreal. Nor would Dr. Tholuck
himself accept it without considerable qualification,
as applicable to the Christian mystic. 4 The Christian
mystic,’ he says (p. 24), £ need not fear such speculations.
He knows no more and wants to know no more than
what is given him by the revelation of God; all
deductions that go beyond, are cut short by him. He
warms himself at the one ray that has descended from
eternity into this fmiteness, unconcerned about all the
fireworks of purely human workmanship, unconcerned
also about the objection that the ray which warms
him more than any earthly light, may itself also be
of the earth only. A Christian knows that to the end
of time there can be no philosophy which could shake
his faith by its syllogisms. He does not care for what
follows from syllogisms, he simply waits for what is
to follow on his faith, namely sight.’

Still, with all this determined striving after ortho-
doxy, Dr. Tholuck admits that mystic religion is the
richest and profoundest production of the human mind,
the most living and the most exalted revelation of
God from the realm of nature, nay that after what he
calls evangelic grace, it occupies the highest and
noblest place.

There are Christian mystics, however, who would
not place internal revelation, or the voice of God
within the heart, so far below external revelation.
To those who know the presence of God within the
heart, this revelation is far more real than any other
can possibly be. They hold with St. Paul (1 Cor. iii.

486

LECTURE XIY.

16) that c man is in the full sense of the word the
temple of God and that the spirit of God dwelleth
within him/ nay they go even further and both as
Christians and as mystics they cling to the belief that
all men are one in the Father and the Son, as the
Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father.
There is no conflict in their minds between Christian
doctrine and mystic doctrine. They are one and the
same in character, the one imparted through Christ on
earth, the other imparted through the indwelling spirit
of God, which again is Christ, as bom within us. The
Gospel of St. John is full of passages to which the
Christian mystic clings, and by which he justifies his
belief in the indwelling spirit of God, or as he also
calls it, the birth of Christ in the human soul.

Objections to Mystic Religion reconsidered.

The dangers which have so often been pointed out
as arising from this mystic belief which makes God
all in all, and therefore would render Him responsible
for the evil also which exists in this world, or would
altogether eliminate the distinction between evil and
good, exist in every religion, in every philosophy.
They are not peculiar to this mystic religion. The
mystic’s chief aim is not to account for the origin of
evil, as no human understanding can — but to teach
how to overcome evil by good. The dangers to morality
are much exaggerated. It is mere pharisaism to say
that they exist in mystic religion only. It is to falsify
history to charge mystics with ignoring the laws of
morality. Are those laws observed by all who are not
mystics? Did the majority of criminals in the world
ever consist of mystics, of men such as St. Bernard

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGLTE.

487

and Tanler ? Has orthodoxy always proved a shield
against temptation and sin ? A man may be lenient
in his judgment of publicans and sinners without
losing his sense of right and wrong. There may
have been cases where the liberty of the spirit has
been used as a veil for licentiousness, though I know
of few only; but in that case it is clear that true
mystic union had not been effected. When the soul
has once reached this true union with God, nay when
it lives in the constant presence of God, evil becomes
almost impossible. We know that most of the evil
deeds to which human nature is prone, are possible in
the dark only. Before the eyes of another human
being, more particularly of a beloved being, they be-
come at once impossible. How much more in the real
presence of a real and really beloved God, as felt by the
true mystic, not merely as a phrase, but as a fact!
We are told how the Russian peasant covers the face
of his Eikon with his handkerchief that it may not
see his wickedness. The mj^stic feels the same ; as
long as there is no veil between him and God, evil
thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds are simply im-
possible to one who feels the actual presence of God.
Nor is he troubled any longer by questions, such as
how the world was created, how evil came into the
world. He is satisfied with the Divine Love that
embraces his soul ; he has all that he can desire, his
whole life is hid through Christ in God, death is
swallowed up in victory, the mortal has become im-
mortal, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princi-
palities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, is
able to separate his soul from the love of God. This

488

LECTURE XI Y.

is the language used by St. Paul ; this is the language
re-eehoed by the noble army of Christian mystics, and
more or less by all those who, whether in India or
Persia or Arabia, nay in Europe also, hunger and
thirst after God, nay who feel themselves children of
God in the very fullest and deepest sense of that
word.

It has been said that the times in which we live
are not congenial to mystic Christianity, that we want
a stronger and sterner faith to carry us through the
gales and the conflicting currents of the day. That
may be so, and if the Church can supply us with
stronger and safer vessels for our passage, let her do
so. But let her never forget that the mediaeval
Church, though glorying in her scholastic defenders,
though warning against the dangers of Platonic and
mystic Christianity, though even unsainting St.
Clement and denouncing the no less saintly Origen,
never ceased to look upon men as St. Bernard (1090-
1152), Hugo (died 11411, and Richard (died 1178)
of St. Victor, as her brightest ornaments and her best
guides.

St. Bernard.

While the great scholastic theologians were laying
down definitions of dogmas, most of them far beyond
the reach of the great mass of the people, the great
mass of men, women, and children were attracted by
the sermons of monks and priests, who, brought up
in the doctrines of mystic Christianity, and filled with
respect for its supposed founder, Dionysius the Areo-
pagite, preached the love of God, a life in and for God,
as the only true Christian life. Christ, they held, had

DIONYSIUS TIIE A E EOF AG ITS.

489

but rarely taught how to believe, but had constantly
taught how to live. His fundamental doctrine had
been His own life, and the chief lesson of that life had
been that Christ was the Son of God, not in a mytho-
logical sense, but in its deepest philosophical meaning,
namely as the thought and will of God incarnate in
a perfect man, as the ideal of manhood realised in all
its fulness, as the Logos, the true Son of God. St.
Bernard of Clairvaux also preached that a Christian
life was the best proof of Christian faith. e The reason/
he writes, * w T hy we should love God, is God Himself ;
the measure of that love is that we should love Him
beyond all measure V 1 Even mere reason/ he coni inues,
4 obliges us to do this ; the natural law, implanted
within us, calls aloud that we should love God. We
owe all to Him, whatever we are ; all goods of the
body and the soul which w r e enjoy, are His work ;
how then should we not be bound to love Him for His
own sake? This duty applies also to Non-Christians ;
for even the heathen, though he does not know Christ,
knows at least himself, and must know therefore that
he owes all that is within him to God. In a still
higher degree the Christian is bound to love *God, for
he enjoys not only the good things of creation, but of
salvation also/

J.ove of God.

This love of God, St. Bernard continues, must be
such that it does not love God for the sake of any
rewards to be obtained for it. This would be mer-
cenary love. True love is satisfied in itself. It is

1 Be diligmdo Beo , col. 1 : Causa diligendi Deum Deus esfc, modus,
sine modo diligere.

490

LECTURE XIV.

true our love is not without its reward, it is true also
that the reward is He Himself who is loved, namely
God, the object of our love. But to look for another
reward beside Him, is contrary to the nature of love.
God gives us a reward for our love, but we must not
seek for it. Nor is this love perfect at once. It has
to pass through several stages. On the first stage,
according to St. Bernard, we love ourselves for our
own sake. That is not yet love of God, but it is a
preparation for it. On the second stage, we love God
for our own sake. That is the first stage toward the
real love of God. On the third stage, we love God for
His own sake. We then enter into the true essence
of the love of God. Lastly, on the fourth stage, we
not only love God for His own sake, but we also love
ourselves and everything else for the sake of God only.*
That is the highest perfection of the love of God,

This highest degree of love, however, is reached in
all its fulness in the next life only. Only rarely, in a
moment of mystic ecstasis may we rise even in this
life to that highest stage. \„ ■ '

Ecstasis, according* to St. Bernard.

St. Bernard then proceeds in his own systematic
way to explain what this ecstasis is, and how it can
be reached. The fundamental condition is humility,
the only way by which we can hope to reach truth.
There are twelve degrees of humility which St. Bernard
describes. But besides humility, perfect love is re-
quired, and then only may we hope to enter into the
mystic world. Hence the first stage is consideration
of truth, based on examination and still carried on by
discursive thought. Then follows contemplation of

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE.

491

truth, without discursive examination. This con-
templation is followed at last by what St. Bernard
calls the admiratio majestutis, the admiration of the
majesty of truth. This requires a purged heart, free
from vice, and delivered from sins, a heart that may
rise on high, nay may for some moments hold the
admiring soul in a kind of stupefaction and ecstasis
(De grad . humiL , c. 8, 22 seq.).

It is in a state such as this that the soul will enter
into the next life. Our will will soften and will melt
away into the divine will, and pour itself into it.
And here we often find St. Bernard using the same
similes as to the relation of the soul to God which we
found in the Upaniskads and in the Neo-Platonists.
As a small drop of water, he says, when it falls into
much wine, seems to fail from itself, while it assumes
the colour and taste of wine; as the ignited and
glowing iron becomes as like as possible to fire,
deprived of its own original nature ; as the air when
permeated by the light of the sun is changed into the
brightness of light, so that it does not seem so much
lighted up, as to be light itself, so will it be necessary
that every human affection should in some ineffable
way melt away and become entirely transformed into
the will of God. For otherwise, how should God be
all in all, if something of man remained in man?
Nay the very caution which was used in the Vedanta,
is used by St. Bernard also. The soul, though lost in
God, is not annihilated in this ecstasis. The substance,
as St. Bernard says, will remain, only in another form,
in another glory, in another power. To be in, that
glory is to become God, est deiftcari.

492

LECTUBE XIV.

St. Bernard’s Position in tlie CBnrcli and State.

To modern ears these ideas, quite familiar in the
Middle Ages, sound strange, some might look upon
them as almost blasphemous. But St. Bernard was
never considered as a blasphemer, even his orthodoxy
was never suspected. He was the great champion of
orthodoxy, the only man who could successfully cope
with Abelard at the Synod of Sens (1140).

St. Bernard’s theology and his whole life supply
indeed the best answer to the superficial objections
that have often been raised against mystic Christianity.
It has often been said that true Christianity does not
teach that man should spend his life in ecstatic con-
templation of the Divine, but expects him to show
his love of God by his active love of his neighbours,
by an active God-fearing life. In our time particu-
larly religious quietism, and a monastic retirement
from the world are condemned without mercy. But
St. Bernard has shown that the contemplative state
of mind is by no means incompatible with love of our
neighbours, nay with a goodly hatred of our enemies,
and with a vigorous participation in the affairs of the
world. This monk, we should remember, who at the
age of twenty-three had retired from the world to
the monastery of Cisteaux, and after three years had
become Abbot of Clairvaux, was the same Bernard
who fought the battle of Pope Innocent II against
the Antipope Anaclet II, who with his own weapons
subdued Arnold of Brescia, and who at last roused
the -whole of Christendom, by his fiery harangues, to
the second Crusade in 1147. This shows that beneath
the stormiest surface the deepest ground of the soul

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE.

493

may remain tranquil and undisturbed. It shows, as
even the Vedantists knew, that man need not go into
the forest to be an anchorite, but that there is a forest
in every man’s heart where he may dwell alone with
the Alone.

Hugo of St. Victor, Knowledge more certain than Paitiu

Another charge often brought against so-called
mystics and quietists, that they are narrow-minded
and intolerant of intellectual freedom, is best refuted
by the intimate friend of St. Bernard, the famous Hugo
of St. Victor, the founder of the Victor ines. When
defining faith in its subjective sense as the act by
which we receive and hold truth, Hugo of St. Victor,
like many of the schoolmen, distinguishes between
opinion, faith, and science, and he places faith
above opinion, but below knowledge due to science.
Opinion, he says, does not exclude the possibility of a
contradictory opposite ; faith excludes such possibility,
but does not yet know what is believed as present,
resting only on the authority of another through
whose teaching what is to be believed is conveyed by
means of hearing ($ruti). Science on the contrary
knows its object as actually present; the object of
knowledge is present to the mind’s eye and is known
owing to this presence. Knowledge by science there-
fore represents a higher degree of certainty than faith,
because it is more perfect to know an object in itself
by means of its immediate presence than to arrive at
its knowledge by hearing the teaching of another only.
The lowest degree of faith is that when the believer
accepts what is to be believed from mere piety, without
understanding by his reason that and w T hy he should

494

LECTUBE XIV.

believe what he has accepted. The next higher stage
of faith is when faith is joined to rational insight, and
reason approves what faith accepts as true, so that faith
is joined with the knowledge of science. The highest
degree is when faith, founded in a pure heart and an
unstained conscience, begins to taste inwardly what
has been embraced and held in faith. Here faith is
perfected to higher mystic contemplation.

How many people who now kneel before the images of
St. Bernard and Hugo of St. Victor, would be horrified
at the doctrine that the higher faith must be founded
on reason, and that faith has less certainty than
the knowledge of science.

Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas Aquinas thought it necessary to guard
against this doctrine, but he also admits that from
a subjective point of view, faith stands half way
between opinion and scientific knowledge, that is to
say, below scientific knowledge, though above mere
opinion. He argues, however, that faith has more
certainty than scientific knowledge, because Christian
faith has the authority of divine revelation, and
we believe what is revealed to us, because it has
been revealed by God as the highest truth. (Non
enim tides, de qua loquimur, assentit alicui, nisi quia
a Deo est revelatum.) He does not tell us how we
can know that it was revealed by God except by
means of reason. Thomas Aquinas, however, though
on this point he differs from St. Hugo, and though he
cannot be called a mystic even in the sense in which
St. Bernard was. nevertheless is most tolerant toward
his mystic friends, nay on certain points the stern

DIONYSIUS THE ABEOPAGITE.

495

scholastic is almost a mystic himself. He speaks of
a state of blessedness produced by a vision of the
Divine (visio divinae essentiae), he only doubts
whether we can ever attain to a knowledge of the
essence of the Divine in this life, and he appeals to
Dionysius the Areopagite, who likewise says that
man can only be joined to God as to something
altogether unknown, that is, that man in this life
cannot gain a quidditative knowledge of God, and
hence his blessedness cannot be perfect on earth. In
support of this Dionysius quotes St. John (Ep. L iii. X>) :
‘ But we know that, when He shall appear, we shall
be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is/

Thomas Aquinas differs on other points also from
the mystics who believe in an ecstatic union with
God even in this life. According to him the highest
end of man can only be likeness with God (Omnia
igitur appetunt, quasi ultimum finem, Deo assimi-
lari ). Only of the soul of Christ does Thomas
Aquinas admit that it saw the Word of God by that
vision by which the Blessed see it, so that His soul
was blessed, and His body also perfect 1 . Likeness
with God is to him the summum bonum , and it is
the highest beatitude which man can reach. This
highest beatitude is at the same time, as Thomas
Aquinas tries to show, the highest perfection of
human nature ; because what distinguishes man from
all other creatures is his intellect, and it follows, there-
fore, that the highest perfection of his intellect in its
speculative and contemplative activity is likewise his

1 Summa , iii. 14, 1 : Anima Christi videbat Verbiim Dei ea vision©
qua Beati vident, et in animo Christi erat beata, sed iu beatitudine
animae glorificatur corpus.

496

LECTURE XI Y.

highest beatitude. (Beatitucio igitur vel felicitas in
actu intellectus consistit substantialiter etqrrincijxditer
magis quam in actu voluntatis (C. G. xiii. c. 26).) The
highest object of this speculative and contemplative
activity of the intellect can only be God. And
here again Thomas Aquinas shows an extraordinary
freedom from theological prejudice. Granted, he
says, that the highest end and the real beatitude of
man consists in the knowledge of God, we must still
distinguish between (1) a natural knowledge of God,
which is common to all human beings ; (2) a demon-
strative knowledge of God, (3) a knowledge of God by
faith, and (4) a knowledge of God by vision (visio
Dei per essentiam ).

If the question be asked which of these is the most
perfect knowledge of God, Thomas Aquinas answers
without the least hesitation, the last. It cannot be
the first, because he held that a knowledge of God, as
supplied by nature, by what we should call Natural
Religion, is imperfect on account of its many errors.
It cannot be the second, because demonstrative know-
ledge is imperfect in being accessible to the few only
who can follow logical demonstrations, also in being
uncertain in its results. It cannot be the third, or
knowledge of God by faith, which most theologians
would consider as the safest, because it has no inter-
nal evidence of truth, and is a matter of the will
rather than of the intellect. But the will, according
to Thomas, stands lower than the intellect. The only
perfect knowledge of God is therefore, according to
this highest authority of scholastic theology, the
immediate vision of God by means of the intellect,
and this can be given us as a supernatural gift only.

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE.

49 7

So far as immediate vision is concerned, Thomas agrees
therefore with the mystics; he even admits, going
in this respect beyond Dionysius, the possibility of
a quidditative knowledge of God, only,, it would seem,
not in this life.

And while he admits the possibility of this intel-
lectual vision, he holds that mere loving devotion
to God can never be the highest beatitude. His
reasons for this are strange. We love the good, he
says, not only when we have it, but also when we
have it not yet, and from this love there arises
desire, and desire is clearly incompatible with perfect
beatitude.

Hugo of St. Victor, on the other hand, accepted
that vision as a simple fact. Man, he said, is
endowed w T ith a threefold eye, the eye of the flesh,
the eye of reason, and the eye of contemplation.
By the eye of the flesh man sees the external world ;
by the eye of reason he sees the spiritual or ideal
world ; by the eye of contemplation he sees the
Divine within him in the soul, and above him in
God. Passing through the stages of cogitation and
meditation, the soul arrives at last at contemplation,
and derives its fullest happiness from an immediate
intuition of the Infinite.

Hugo saw that the inmost and the highest, the soul
within and God above, are identical, and that there-
fore the pure in heart can see God.

Hugo is rich in poetical illustration. He com-
pares, for instance, this spiritual process to the
application of fire to green wood. It kindles with
difficulty, he says ; clouds of smoke arise at first,
a flame is seen at intervals, flashing out here and
(4) K k

498

lecture XIV.

there • as the fire gains strength, it surrounds, it
pierces the fuel; presently it leaps and roves m
triumph — the nature of the wood is being transformed
into the nature of fire. Then, the struggle over, the
crackling ceases, the smoke is gone, there is left
a tranquil friendly brightness, for the master-element
has subdued all into itself. So, says Hugo do sin
and grace contend; and the smoke and trouble and
anguish hang over the strife. But when grace grows
stronger, and the soul’s eye clearer, and truth pervades
and swallows up the kindling, aspiring nature, then
comes holy calm, and love is all m all. Save God in
the heart, nothing of self is left 1 .

' This nassage, quoted by Vaughan in his Hours with the Mystics,

vol i n. P 156 Gird ed.), seems to have suggested what Master
Eckhart writes, p. 431, 1. 19, ed. Pfeiffer.

LECTURE XV.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

Mystic Christianity.

ripHE stream of mystic Christianity which we have
JL watched from its distant springs flows on in an
ever deepening and widening channel through the whole
of the Middle Ages. In Germany more particularly
there came a time when what is called mystic Chris-
tianity formed almost the only spiritual food of the
people. Scholasticism, no doubt, held its own among
the higher ecclesiastics, but the lower clergy and the
laity at large, lived on the teaching which, as we
saw, flowed originally from Dionysius, and inter-
penetrated even the dry scholasticism of Thomas
Aquinas (1224-1274), of Bonaventura (1221-1274), and
others. It then came to the surface once more in the
labours of the German Mystics, and it became in their
hands a very important moral and political power.

T3ie German. Mystics.

First of all, these German Mystics boldly adopted
the language of the people, they spoke in the vulgar
tongue to the vulgar people \ they spoke in the lan-

1 The earliest trace of Sermons in German is found in a list of
books of the tenth century from St. Emmeram at Augsburg,
K k 2

500

LECTURE XV.

guage of the heart to the heart of the people. Secondly,
they adapted themselves in other respects also to the
wants and to the understanding of their flocks. Their
religion was a religion of the heart and of love
rather than of the head and of logical deduction. It
arose at the very time when scholastic Christianity
had outlived itself, and when, owing to misfortunes
of every kind, the people stood most in need of reli-
gious support and consolation.

The Foiirteenth Century in Germany.

The fourteenth century, during which the German
mystics were most active and most powerful, was a
time not only of political and ecclesiastical unrest,
but a time of intense suffering. In many respects it
reminds us of the fifth century which gave rise to
mystic Neo-Platonism in the Christian Church. The
glorious period of the Hohenstaufen emperors bad come
to a miserable end. The poetical enthusiasm of the
nation had passed away. The struggle between the
Empire and the Pope seemed to tear up the very roots
of religion and loyalty, and the spectacle of an ex-
travagant, nay even an openly profligate life, led by
many members of the higher clergy had destroyed
nearly all reverence for the Church. Like the Church,
the Empire also was torn to pieces ; no one knew who
was Emperor and who was Pope. The Interdict fell
like a blight on the fairest portions of Germany, every

Sermones ad populmn teutonice ; cf. XaumaniTs S&rapeum, 1841, p. 261.
An edict of Charlemagne, in which he commands the Bishops to
preach in the language understood by the people, goes hack to the
year 813. It was repeated in 847 at the Synod of Mayenco under
Rhabanus Maurus.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

501

kind of pestilence broke out, ending at last in the
fearful visitation of the Black Death (1348-1349).

The Interdict.

This Interdict meant far more than wo have any
idea of. The churches were closed, no bells were
allowed to be rung. The priests left their parishes :
in many places there were no clergy to baptise
children, to perform marriages, or to bury the dead.
In few places only some priests were brave enough
to defy the Papal Interdict, and to remain with their
flocks, and this they did at the peril of their body
and their soul. The people became thoroughly scared.
They saw the finger of God in all the punishments
inflicted on their country, but they did not know how
to avert His anger. Many people banded together
and travelled from village to village, singing psalms
and scourging themselves in public in the most hor-
rible manner. Others gave themselves up to drink
and every kind of indulgence. But many retired
from the world altogether, and devoted their lives
to contemplation, looking forward to the speedy
approach of the end of the world.

The People ana the Priesthood.

It was during those times of outward trouble and
inward despair that some of those who are generally
called the German Mystics, chiefly Dominican and
Franciscan monks, devoted themselves to the service
of the people. They felt that not even the Papal Inter-
dict could absolve them from the duty which they
owed to God and to their flocks. They preached
wherever they could find a congregation, in the streets,

502

LECTUKE XV.

in the meadows, wherever two or three were gathered
together, and ■what they preached was the simple
Gospel, interpreted in its true or, as it was called, its
mystic meaning. The monastic orders of the Fran-
ciscans and Dominicans were most active at the time,
and sent out travelling preachers all over the country.
Their sermons were meant for the hour, and in few
cases only have they been preserved in Latin or in
German. Such -were the sermons of David of Augs-
burg (died 1271) and Eerchtold of Regensburg (died
1272). The effect of their preaching must have been
very powerful. We have descriptions of large gather-
ings which took place wherever they came. The
churches were not large enough to hold the multi-
tudes, and the sermons had often to be delivered
outside the avails of the towns. We hear of meetings
of 40,000, 100,000, nay, of 200,000 people, though we
ought to remember how easily such numbers are exag-
gerated by friendly reporters. The effect of these
sermons seems to have been instantaneous. Thus we
are told that a nobleman who had appropriated a
castle and lands belonging to the cloister of Pfaefers,
at once restored them after hearing Berchtold’s sermon.
When taken captive Berchtold preached to his captor,
and not only converted his household, but persuaded
him to join his order. He was even believed to possess
the power of working miracles and of prophesying.
One year before his own death and while he was
preaching at Eatisbon, he suddenly had a vision of
his friend and teacher, David of Augsburg, and he
prophesied his death, which, we are told, had taken
place at that very moment. A woman while listening
to his sermon fell on her knees and confessed her sins

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

503

before the whole congregation. Berchtold accepted
her confession and asked who would marry the woman,
promising to give her a dowry. A man came forward,
and Berchtold at once collected among the people the
exact sum which he had promised for her dowry. We
know, of course, how easily such rumours spring up,
and how rapidly they grow. Still we may accept all
these legends as symptoms of the feverish movement
which these popular preachers were then producing all
over Germany. No wonder that these German mystics
and the Friends of God, as they were called, were dis-
liked by the regular clergy. Even when they belonged
to such orthodox orders as the Dominicans and Francis-
cans they were occasionally carried away into saying
things which were not approved of by the higher clergy.
They naturally sided with the people in their protests
against the social sins of the higher classes. The
luxurious life of the clergy, particularly if of foreign
nationality, began to stir up a national antagonism
against Rome. Nor was this unfriendly feeling against
Rome the only heresy of which the German people
and the German mystic preachers were suspected.
They were suspected of an inclination towards Wal-
densian, Albigensian, and in general towards what
were then called Pantheistic heresies. There is no
doubt that the influence of the Waldensians extended
to Germany, and that some of them had been active
in spreading a knowledge of the Bible among the
people in Germany by means pf vernacular transla-
tions. We read in an account of the Synod of
Trier, A.D. 1231, that many of the people were found
to be instructed in the sacred writings which they pos-
sessed in German translations (Multi eorum instruct!

504

LECTURE XV.

Grant in Scrip turis sanctis quas habebant intheutonicum
translatas). Complaint is made that even little girls
were taught the Gospels and Epistles, and that people
learnt passages of the Bible by heart in the vulgar
tongue (Puellas parvulas docent evangelia et epistolas
— dociles inter aliquos complices et facundos docent
verba evangelii et dicta apostolorum et sanctorum
aliorum in vulgar! lingua corde firmare) L The Albi-
genses seem to have adopted the name of Katharl ,
the pure, possibly in recollection of the Kuihcrms
which was a preliminary to the Henosis . This name of
Kathari became in German Keizer , with the sense of
heretic. The inquisition for heresy was very active, but
unable to quell the religious movement in Germany.
The very orders, Dominicans and Franciscans, which
were meant to counteract it, were not altogether safe
against heretical infection. Among the earliest Domi-
nicans who were celebrated as popular preachers, that
is to say, who were able to preach in German, we find
the name of the notorious inquisitor Konrad of Mar-
burg, who was slain by the people in 1234 for his
cruelties. The mystic sermons of Albertus Magnus
were written in Latin and afterwards translated into
German. The people naturally sided with those who
sided with them. To them what is called mystic
Christianity was the only Christianity they under-
stood and cared for. They had at that time very little
to occupy their thoughts, and their longing for religious
comfort became all the stronger the less there was to
distract their thoughts or to satisfy their ambition in
the political events of the times.

1 Wackernagel und Weiiihold, Altdeutsche Predigten, p. 347.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

505

Dominicans and Franciscans.

It may truly be said that the great bulk of the
German people were then for the first time brought into
living contact with their religion by these Dominican
and Franciscan friars. However much we may admire
the learning and the logical subtlety of the school-
men, it is easy to see that the questions which they
discussed were not questions that could possibly
influence the religious thoughts or conduct of the
masses. It had long been felt that something else
and something more was wanted, and this something
else and something more seemed best to bo supplied
by what was called mystic Christianity, by what
Dionysius had called the Stulta tiapifutla c.crrdeus
laudantes 1 i 4 the simple-minded Wisdom exceeding all
praise.'

This simple religion was supposed to spring from
the love which God Himself has poured into the
human soul, while the human soul in loving God
does but return the love of God. This religion does
not require much learning, it is meant for the poor
and pure in spirit. It was meant to lead man from
the stormy sea of his desires and passions to the
safe haven of the eternal, to remain there firmly
anchored in the love of God, while it was admitted
that the scholastic or as it was called the literary
religion could give no rest, but could only produce
a never-ceasing appetite for truth and for victory.

There was, however, no necessity for separating
learning from mystic religion, as we see in the
case of St. Augustine, in Bonaventura, St. Bernard,

1 St5ckl, Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelai&rs , vol. i. p. 1030.

506

LECTUBE XV.

and once more in Master Eckhart and many of the
German mystics. These men had two faces, one for
the doctors of divinity, their learned rivals, the
other for the men, women, and children, who came to
hear such sermons as Master Eckhart could preach,
whether in Latin or in the vulgar tongue. At first,
these popular preachers were not learned theolo-
gians, but simply eloquent preachers, who travelled
from village to village, and tried to appeal to the
conscience of the peasants, to men and women, in
their native tongue. But they prepared the way
for the German mystics of the next generation, who'
were no longer mere kind-hearted travelling friars,
but learned men, doctors of theology, and some of
them even high dignitaries of the Church, The best-
known names among these are Master Eckhart,
Tauler, Suso, Ruysbrook, Gerson, and Cardinal
Cusanus.

Eckliart and Tauler.

Every one of these men deserves a study by him-
self. The best-known and most attractive is no
doubt Tauler. His sermons have been frequently
published ; they were translated into Latin, into
modem German, some also into English. They are
still read in Germany as useful for instruction and
edification, and they have escaped the suspicion of
heresy which has so often been raised, and, it may be,
not without some reason, against Master Eckhart.
Still Master Eckhart is a much more powerful, and
more original thinker, and whatever there is of real
philosophy in Tauler seems borrowed from him. In
Eckhart’s German writings, which were edited for

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

507

the first time by Pfeiffer (1857), mystic Christianity,
or as it might more truly be called, the Christianity
as conceived by St. John, finds its highest expression.
It is difficult to say whether he is more of a scholastic
philosopher or of a mystic theologian. The unholy
divorce between religion and philosophy did not
exist for him. A hundred years later so holy and
orthodox a writer as Gerson had to warn the clergy
that if they separated religion from philosophy, they
would destroy both l Master Eekhart, though he
constantly refers to and relies on the Bible, never
appeals simply to its authority in order to establish
the truth of his teaching. Iiis teaching agrees with
the teaching of St. John and of St. Paul hut it was
meant to convince by itself. He thought lie could
show that Christianity, if only rightly understood,
could satisfy all the wants both of the human heart-
and of human reason. Every doctrine of the Hew
Testament is accepted by him, but it is thought
through by himself, and only after it has passed
through the fire of his own mind, is it preached
by him as eternal truth. He quotes the pagan
masters as well as the Fathers of the Church, and
he sometimes appeals to the former as possessing
a truer insight into certain mysteries than even
Christian teachers.

He is most emphatic in the assertion of truth. £ I
speak to you/ he says, £ in the name of eternal truth.’
£ It is as true as that God liveth/ 4 Bi gote, bi gote/
£ By God, by God/ occurs so often that one feels
almost inclined to accept the derivation of ‘bigot 8

1 Dum a religion© seeernere putanfc philosophiam, utrnmque
perdunt. Gerson, Serm. I.

508

LECTURE XV.

as having meant originally a man who on every
occasion appeals to God, then a hypocrite, then a
fanatic. Eckhart’s attitude, however, is not that
of many less straightforward Christian philosophers
who try to force their philosophy into harmony with
the Bible. It is rather that of an independent
thinker, who rejoices whenever he finds the results
of his own speculations anticipated by, and as it
were hidden, in the Bible. Nor does he ever, so
far as I remember, appeal to miracles in support of
the truth of Christianity or of the true divinity of
Christ. When he touches on miracles, he generally
sees an allegory in them, and he treats them much
as the Stoics treated Homer or as Philo treated the
Old Testament. Otherwise, miracles had no interest
for him. In a world in which, as he firmly believed,
not one sparrow could fall on the ground without
your Father (Matt. x. 29), where was there room for
a miracle? No doubt, and he often says so him-
self, his interpretation of the Bible was not always
in accordance with that of the great doctors of the
Church. Some of his speculations are so bold that
one does not wonder at his having incurred the
suspicion of heresy. Even in our more enlightened
days some of his theories about the Godhead would
no doubt sound very startling. He sometimes seems
bent on startling his congregation, as when he says,
c He who says that God is good, offends Him as much
as if he were to say that white is black/ And yet he
always remained a most obedient son of the Church,
only in his own way. Like other independent thinkers
of that time, he always declared himself ready to
revoke at once anything and everything heretical

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

500

in his writings, but he called on his adversaries to
prove first of all that it was heretical. The result
was that though he was accused of heresy bv the
Archbishop of Cologne in 1326, nothing very serious
happened to him during his lifetime. But after hi*
death, out of .twenty-eight statements of his which
had been selected as heretical for Papal condemnation,
the first fifteen and the two last were actually con-
demned, while the remaining eleven were declared
to be suspicious. It was then too late for Master
Eckhart to prove that they were not heretical.

Eckhart was evidently a learned theologian, and
his detractors were afraid of him. He knew his
Plato and his Aristotle. How he admired Plato is
best shown by his calling him Der graze Pfafe , the
great priest (p. 261, L 21). Aristotle is to him simply
the Master. He had studied Proclus, or Proculus,
as he calls him, and he often refers to Cicero, Seneca,
and even to the Arabic philosopher, Avicenna. He
frequently appeals to St. Chrysostom, Dionysius, St.
Augustine, and other Fathers of the Church, and has
evidently studied Thomas Aquinas, who may almost
be called his contemporary. He had received in
fact a thorough scholastic training 1 , and was a match
for the best among the advocates of the Church.
Eckhart had studied and afterwards taught at the
University of Paris, and had received his Degree of
Doctor of Divinity from Pope Boniface VIII. In
1304 he became the Provincial of the Order of the
Dominicans in Saxony, though his residence remained

1 How much Eckhart owed to his scholastic training has been
well brought out by H. Denifle in his learned article, Meister
Eckeharfs Lateinische Schriften unci die Gmmlanschauung seiner Lehre, im
Archivfur Litterateur und KirchengeschicJite, vol. ii. fasc. 3, 4.

510

LECTURE XV.

at Cologne. He was also appointed Vicar-General
of Bohemia, and travelled much in Germany, visiting
the monasteries of his order and trying to reform
them. But he always returned to the Rhine, and he
died at Cologne, probably 5n the year 1327.

Eckhart has been very differently judged by differ-
ent people. By those who could not understand him,
he has been called a dreamer and almost a madman ;
by others who were his intellectual peers, he has
been called the wisest Doctor, the friend of God, the
best interpreter of the thoughts of Christ, of St. John,
and St. Paul, the forerunner of the Reformation.
He was a vir sanctus , even according to the testi-
mony of his bitterest enemies. Many people think
they have disposed of him by calling him a mystic.
He was a mystic in the sense in which St. John was,
to mention no greater name. Luther, the German
Reformer* was not a man given to dreams or senti-
mentalism. No one would call him a mystic, in
the vulgar sense of the word. But he was a great
admirer of Eckhart, if we may take him to have
been the author of the Theologia Germanica. I con-
fess I doubt his authorship, but the book is certainly
pervaded by his spirit, particularly as regards the
practical life of a true Christian 1 . This is what
Luther writes of the book : c From no book, except
the Bible, and the works of St. Augustine, have I
learnt more what God, what Christ, what man and
other things are, than from this [Luther's Werke ,
1883, vol, i. p. 378). A very different thinker, but

1 It has been translated into English by Miss Winkworth, and
was much prized by my departed friends, Frederick Maurice,
Charles Kingsley, and Baron Bunsen.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 511

likewise no dreamer or sentimentalist, Schopenhauer,
says of Eckhart that his teaching stands to the New
Testament as essence of wine to wine.

Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, another
ardent admirer of the Theologia Germauica , speaks
of it as £ that golden little book. 9

Eckliart’s Mysticism.

It is a great mistake to suppose that Eckhart’s
so-called mysticism was a matter of vague sentiment.
On the contrary, it was built up on the solid basis of
scholastic philosophy, and it defied in turn the on-
slaughts of the most ingenious scholastic disputants.
How thoroughly his mind was steeped in scholastic
philosophy, has lately been proved in some learned
papers by Dr. Denifld. I admit his writings are
not always easy. First of all, they are written in
Middle High German, a language which is separated
by only about a century from the German of the
Nibelunge. And his language is so entirely his own
that it is sometimes very difficult to catch his exact
meaning, still more to convey it in English. It is
the same as in the Upanishads. The words them-
selves are easy enough, but their drift is often very
hard to follow.

It seems to me that a study of the Upanishads is
often the very best preparation for a proper under-
standing of Eckhart’s Tracts and Sermons. The
intellectual atmosphere is just the same, and he who
has learnt to breathe in the one, will soon feel at home
in the other.

I regret that it would be quite impossible to give

512

LECTURE XV.

you even the shortest abstract of the whole of Eckhart’s
psychological and metaphysical system. It deserves
to be studied for its own sake, quite as much as the
metaphysical systems of Aristotle or Descartes, and it
would well repay the labours of some future Gifford
Lecturer to bring together all the wealth of thought
that lies scattered about in Eckharts writings. I can
here touch on a few points only, such as bear on our
own special subject, the nature of God and of the
Soul, and the relation between the two.

Eckliart’s Definition of tlie Deity.

Eckhart defines the Godhead as simple esse , as actus
purus , . This is purely scholastic, and even Thomas
Aquinas himself would probably not have objected to
Eckhart’s repeated statement that Esse est Eeus .
According to him there is and can be nothing higher
than to be 1 . He naturally appeals to the Old Testament
in order to show that I am is the only possible name of
Deity. In this he does not differ much from St. Thomas
Aquinas and other scholastic philosophers. St. Thomas
says : Ipsum esse est perfectissimum omnium, compara-
tur enim ad omnia ut actus . . . unde ipsum esse est
actualitas omnium rerum et etiamipsarum formarum 2 .
Being without qualities God is to us unknowable and
incomprehensible, hidden and dark, till the Godhead
is lighted up by its own light, the light of self-know-
ledge, by which it becomes subjective and objective,
Thinker and Thought, or, as the Christian mystics
express it, Father and Son. The bond between the

1 Cf. Denifl6,l. c., p. 4&6.

2 See DenifLe, Meister EckeharCs Laieinische Schriften. p. 436.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

513

two is the Holy Ghost. Thus the Godhead, the
Divine Essence or Ousia, becomes God in three Per-
sons. In thinking Himself, the Father thinks every-
thing that is within Him, that is, the ideas, the logoi
of the unseen world. Here Master Eckhart stands
completely on the old Platonic and Stoic platform.
He is convinced that there is thought and reason in
the world, and he concludes in consequence that the
world of thought, the Koarixos vqijtos, can only be the
thought of God. Granted this, and everything else
follows. ‘The eternal Thought or the Word of the
Father, is the only begotten Son, and, 5 he adds, k he is
our Lord Jesus Christ 1 . 9

We see here how Eckhart uses the old Alexandrian
language, and conceives the eternal ideas not only as
many, but also as one, as the Logos, in which all
things, as conceived by the Father, are one before
they become many in the phenomenal world. But
Master Eckhart is very anxious to show that though
all things are dynamically in God, God is not actually
in all t hin gs. Like the Vedantist, he speaks of God
as the universal Cause, and yet claims for Him
an extra-mundane existence. 4 God,’ he writes, c is
outside all nature, He is not Himself Nature, He is
above it V

1 Daz sol man als6 verstan, Daz ewige wort ist daz wort des
vater und ist sin einborn sun, unser berre Jesus Knstus.
Eckhart, ed. Pfeiffer, p. 76, 1. 25.

2 Daz got etwaz ist, daz von ndt uber wesen sm muoz, Was
wesen hut, zit oder stat, das horet ze gota niht, er ist uber daz
selbe : daz er ist in alien creaturen, daz ist er doch dar uber ; was
di in vil dingen ein ist, daz muoz von not uber diu dme sin.
Pfeiffer, 1. c„ p. 268, 1. 10. See also Eckhart’s Latin version : Deus
sictotus est in quolibet, quod totus est extra quodlibet, et propter
hoc ea quae sunt eujuslibet, ipsi non convemunt, puta varian,
senescere aut corrumpi. . . Hinc est quod anima non variatur nee

(4 ) LI

514

LECTURE XT.

And yet Master Eekhart is called a pantheist by
men who hardly seem to know the meaning of pan-
theism or of Christianity. And when he further on
ventures to say, that the worlds, both the ideal and
the phenomenal, were thought and created by God on
account of His divine love, and therefore by necessity,
and from all eternity, this again is branded as
heresy, as if there could be any variance in the Divine
Counsel, nay, as if there could be in God any difference
between what we call necessity and liberty 1 . If human
language can reach at all to these dizzy heights of
speculation, nothing seems more in accordance with
Christian doctrine than to say what Eekhart says:
4 God is always working, and His working is to beget
His Son/

Creation is Emanation.

What is generally called Creation is conceived by
Eekhart as Emanation. On this point he is at one
with Thomas Aquinas and many of the most orthodox
theologians. I do not appeal to Dionysius or Scotus
Erigena, for their orthodoxy has often been questioned.
But Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa , p. 1, qu. 19, a. 4,
without any hesitation explains creation as emanatio
totius entis ab uno, emanation of all that is from One.
Nay, he goes further, and maintains that God is in all
things, potentially, essentially, and present : per poten-
tiam, essentiam et praesentiam ; per essentiam, nam
omne ens est participatio divini esse ; per potentiam,

seneseit nec desinit extracto oculo aut pede, quia ipsa se tota est
extra oculum et pedem, in mami tota et in qualibet parte alia tota.
Denifle, 1. c., p. 430. Pfeiffer, 1. c., p. 612, 1. 28.

1 The condemned sentence was : Quam cito Deus fuit, tam cito
mundum creavit. Concedi ergo potest quod mundus ab aetemo
fuerit.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

515

in quantum omnia in virtute ejus agunt; per prae-
sentiam. in quantum ipso omnia immediate ordinat et
disponit 1 . Such ideas would he stigmatised as pan-
theistic by many living theologians, and so would
consequ ently many passages even from the New Testa-
ment, where God is represented as the All in All. But
Eckbart argued quite consistently that unless the
soul of man is accepted as an efflux from God, there
can be no reflux of the soul to God, and this according
to Eckhart is the vital point of true Christianity. A
clock cannot return to the eloekmaker, but a drop of
rain can return to the ocean from whence it was lifted,
and a ray of light is always light.

‘ AH creatures,’ he writes, ‘ are in God as uncreated,
but not by themselves. 5 This would seem to mean
that the ideas of all things were in God, before the
things themselves were created or were made mani-
fest. ‘ All creatures,’ he continues, ‘ are more noble
in God than they are by themselves. God is there-
fore by no means confounded with the world, as
He has been by Amalrich and by all pantheists. The
world is not God, nor God the world. The being
of the world is from God, but it is different from the
being of God.’ Eckhart really admits two processes,
one the eternal creation in God, the other the creation
in time and space. This latter creation differs, as he
says, from the former, as a work of art differs from
the idea of it in the mind of the artist.

The Human Soul.

Eckhart looks upon the human soul as upon every-
thing else, as thoughts spoken by God through
creation. But though the soul and all the powers of

1 StOckl, Gesch. der Philos . des Mittelcdters, vol. iL p. 519.

LI 2

516

LECTUEE XV.

the soul, such as perception, memory, understanding
and will, are created, he holds that there is something
in the sou] uncreated, something divine, nay the God-
head itself. This was again one of the theses which
were declared heretical after his death 1 . -* v

In the same way then as the Godhead or the Divine
Ground is without any knowable qualities and cannot
be known except as being, the Divine Element in the
soul also is without qualities and cannot be known
except as being. This Divine Spark, though it may
be covered and hidden for a time by ignorance, passion,
or sin, is imperishable. It gives us being, oneness,
personality, and subjectivity, and being subjective,
like God, it can only be a knower, it can never be
known, as anything else is known objectively.

It is through this Divine element in the human soul
that we are and become one with God. Man cannot
know God objectively, but in what Eckhart calls
mystic contemplation, he can feel his oneness with
the Divine. Thus Eckhart writes : c What is seen with
the eye wherewith I see God, that is the same eye
wherewith God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are
one eye and one vision, one knowing, and one loving.
It is the same to know God and to be known by God,
to see God and to be seen by God. And as the air
illumined is nothing but that it illumines, for it
illumines because it is illumined, in the same manner
we know because we are known and that He makes
us to know Him 2 / This knowing and to be known
is what Eckhart calls the Birth of the Son in the souL

1 Aliquid est in anima quod est increatum et increabile ; si tota
anima esset talis, esset increa.ta et increabilis, et hoc est inteUectus.

2 Pfeiffer, L c., p. 38, L 10.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

517

c If His knowing is mine, and His substance, His very
nature and essence, is knowing, it follows that His
essence and substance and nature are mine. And if
His nature and essence and substance are mine, I am
the son of God/ £ Behold/ he exclaims , 4 what manner
of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should
be called the sons of God ’ — and be the sons of God.

This second birth and this being bom as the son of
God is with Eckhart synonymous with the Son of God
being born in the soul. He admits no difference be-
tween man, when bom again, and the Son of God, at
least no more than there is between God the Father
and God the Son. Man becomes by grace what Christ
is by nature, and only if born again as the son of God
can men receive the Holy Ghost.

What Eckhart calls the Divine Ground in the soul
and in the Godhead may be, I think, justly compared
with the neutral Brahman of the Upanishads, as dis-
covered in the world and in the soul. And as in the
Upanishads the masculine Brahman is distinguished,
though not separated, from the neutral Brahman, so,
according to Eckhart, the three Persons may be distin-
guished from the Divine Ground, though they cannot
be separated from it.

All this sounds very bold, but if we translate it into
ordinary language it does not seem to mean more
than that the three Divine Persons share this under-
lying Godhead as their common essence or Ousia, that
they are in fact homoousioi, which is the orthodox
doctrine for which Eckhart, like St. Clement, tries to
supply an honest philosophical explanation.

If we want to understand Eckhart, we must never
forget that, like Dionysius, he is completely under the

518

LECTURE XV.

sway of Neo-Plat onist, in one sense even of Platonist
philosophy. When we say that God created the
world, Eckhart would say that the Father spoke the
Word, the Logos, or that He begat the Son. Both
expressions mean exactly the same with him.

All these are really echoes of very ancient thought.
We must remember that the ideas, according to Plato,
constituted the eternal or changeless world, of which
the phenomenal world is but a shadow. With Plato,
the ideas or the ei’Sr/ alone can be said to be leal, and
they alone can form the subject of true knowledge.
Much as the Stoics protested against the independent
existence of these ideas, the Neo-Platonists took them
up ao-ain, and some of the Fathers of the Church
represented them as the pure forms or the perfect
types according to which the world was created, and
all things in it. It was here that the ancient philo-
sophers discovered what we call the Origin of Species.
We saw how the whole of this ideal creation, or rather
manifestation, was also spoken of as the Logos or the
manifested Word of God by which He created the
world, and this Logos again was represented, as we
saw, long before the rise of Christianity, as the off-
sprino- or the only begotten Son of God. Eckhart,
like some of the earliest Fathers of the Church, started
with the concept of the Logos or the Word as the Son
of God, the other God (pevrepos deos), and he predicated
this Logos of Christ who was to him the human reali-
sation of the ideal Son of God, of Divine Season and
Divine Love.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

519

The Messiah and the I.cg’os.

What the Jews did with the name of the Messiah,
the Greeks had to do with the name of the Lems.
The idea of the Messiah was there for ages, and though
it must have required an immense effort, the Jews who
embraced Christianity brought themselves to say that
this ideal Messiah, this Son of David, this King of Glory
was Jesus, the Crucified. In the same manner and wdth
the same effort, and, as I believe, with the same honesty,
the Greek philosophers, who embraced Christianity,
had to bring themselves to say that this Logos, this
Thought of God, this Son of God, this Monogenes or
Only begotten, known to Plato as w T ell as to Philo,
appeared in Jesus of Nazareth, and that in Him alone
the divine idea of manhood had ever been fully realised.
Hence Christ was often called the First Man, not
Adam. The Greek converts who became the real
conquerors of the Greek world, raised their Logos
to a much higher meaning than it had in the minds
of the Stoics, just as the Jewish converts imparted to
the name of Messiah a much more sublime import
than what it had in the minds of the Scribes and
Pharisees. Yet the best among these Greek converts,
in joining the Christian Church, never forswore their
philosophical convictions, least of all did they commit
themselves to the legendary traditions which from
very early times had gathered round the cradle of the
Son of Joseph and Mary. To the real believer in
Chiist as the Word and the Son of God these tradi-
tions seemed hardly to exist ; they were neither denied
nor affirmed. It is in the same spirit that Master
Eckhart conceives the true meaning of the Son of God
as the Word, and of God the Father as the speaker

520

LECTURE XY.

and thinker and worker of the Word, freely using
these Galilean legends as beautiful allegories, but never
appealing to them as proofs of the truth of Christ's
teaching. Eekhart, to quote his ipsissima verba , repre-
sents the Father as speaking His word into the soul,
and when the Son is born, every soul becomes Maria.
He expresses the same thought by saying that the
Divine Ground, that is the Godhead, admits of no
distinction or predicate. It is oneness, darkness, but
the light of the Father pierces into that darkness,
and the Father, knowing His own essence, begets in
the knowledge of Himself, the Son. And in the love
which the Father has for the Son, the Father with
the Son breathes the Spirit. By this process the
eternal dark ground becomes lighted up, the Godhead
becomes God, and God in three Persons. When the
Father by thus knowing Himself, speaks the eternal
Word, or what is the same, begets His Son, He speaks
in that Word all things. His divine Word is the one
idea of all things (that is the Logos), and this eternal
Word of the Father is His only Son, and the Lord
Jesus Christ in whom He has spoken all creatures
without beg inn ing and without end. And this speak-
ing does not take place once only. According to
Eekhart ‘God is always working 1 , in a now, in
an eternity, and His working is begetting His Son. In
this birth all things have flown out, and such delight
has God in this birth, that He spends all His power
in it. God begets Himself altogether in His Son, he
speaks all things in Him.’ Though such language
may sound strange to us, and though it has been con-
demned by those who did not know its purport, as
i Pfeiffer, 1. c., p. 254.

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

521

fanciful, if not as heretical, we should remember that
St. Augustine also uses exactly the same language:
'The speaking of God/ he says, 'is His begetting, and
His begetting is His speaking 5 (p. 100, 1 . 27). and
Eckhart continues (p. 100, 1. 29): ‘If God were to
cease from this speaking of the Word, even for one
moment, Heaven and Earth would vanish/

With us, word has so completely lost its full mean-
ing, as being the unity of thought and sound, the one
inseparable from the other, that we cannot be reminded
too often that in all these philosophical speculations
Logos or Word does not mean the word as mere sound
or as we find it in a dictionary, but word as the living
embodiment, as the very incarnation of thought.

What has seemed so strange to some modem philo-
sophers, namely, this inseparableness of thought and
word, or, as I sometimes expressed It, the identity of
reason and language, was perfectly familiar to these
ancient thinkers and theologians, and I am glad to see
that my critics have ceased at last to call my Science
of Thought a linguistic paradox, and begin to see that
what I contended for in that book was known long
ago, and that no one ever doubted it. The Logos ,
the Word, as the thought of God, as the whole body
of divine or eternal ideas, which Plato had prophe-
sied, which Aristotle had criticised In vain, which
the Neo-Platonists re-established, is a truth that
forms, or ought to form, the foundation of all phi-
losophy. And unless we have fully grasped it, as it
was grasped by some of the greatest Fathers of the
Church, we shall never be able to understand the
Fourth Gospel, we shall never be able to call ourselves
true Christians. For it is, as built upon the Logos,

522

LECTURE XV.

that Christianity holds its own unique position among
all the religions of the world. Of course, a religion is
not a philosophy. It has a different purpose, and it
must speak a different language. Nothing is more
difficult than to express the results of the deepest
thought in language that should be intelligible to all,
and yet not misleading. Unless a religion can do
that, it is not a religion ; at all events, it cannot live :
for every generation that is born into the world
requires a popular, a childlike translation of the
sublimest truths which have been discovered and
stored up by the sages and prophets of old. If no
child could grow up a Christian, unless it understood
the true meaning of Logos, as elaborated by Platonic,
Stoic, and Neo-Platonic philosophers, and then adopted
and adapted by the Fathers of the Church, how many
Christians should we have? By using the words
Father and Son, the Fathers of the Church felt that
they used expressions which contain nothing that is
not true, and which admit of a satisfactory interpre-
tation as soon as such interpretation is wanted. And
the most satisfactory explanation, the best solution of
all our religious difficulties seems to me here as else-
where supplied by the historical school. Let us only
try to discover how words and thoughts arose, how
thoughts came to be what they are, and we shall
generally find that there is some reason, whether human
or Divine, in them.

To me, I confess, nothing seems more delightful
than to be able to discover how by an unbroken
chain our thoughts and words carry us back from
century to century, how the roots and feeders of our
mind pierce through stratum after stratum, and still

CHKISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

523

draw their life and nourishment from the deepest
foundations, from the hearts of the oldest thinkers of
mankind. That is what gives us confidence in our-
selves, and often helps to impart new life to what
threatens to become hard and petrified, mythological
and unmeaning, in our intellectual and, more particu-
larly, in our religious life. To many people, I feel
sure, the beginning of the Gospel of St. John , 4 In the
beginning was the Word/ and again, ‘The Word was
made flesh/ can only he a mere tradition. But as
soon as we can trace back the Word that in the
beginning was with God, and through which (ot clvtqv)
all things were made, to the Monogenes, as pos-
tulated by Plato, elaborated by the Stoics, and handed
on by the Neo-Platonists, whether pagan, Jewish, or
Christian, to the early Fathers of the Church, a contact
seems established, and an electric current seems to
run in a continuous stream from Plato to St. John,
and from St. John to our own mind, and give light
and life to some of the hardest and darkest sayings of
the New Testament. Let us reverence by all means
what is called childlike faith, but let us never forget
that to think also is to worship God.

Now let us return to Master Eckharfc, and remember
that according to him the soul is founded on the same
Divine Ground as God, that it shares in fact in the
same nature, that it would he nothing without it.
Yet in its created form it is separated from God. It
feels that separation or its own incompleteness, and
in feeling this, it becomes religious. How is that
yearning for completion to be satisfied ? How is that
divine home-sickness to be healed? Most mystic
philosophers would say, by the soul being drawn near

524

LECTUKE XV.

to God in love, or by an approach to God, just as we
saw in the Upanishads the soul approaching the
throne of Brahman, as a masculine deity.

The Approach to God.

Eckhart, however, like the higher Ved&ntists, denies
that there can be such an approach, or at all events
he considers it only a lower form of religion. Thus he
says, p. BO : £ While we are approaching God, we never
come to Him,’ — almost the very words of the Ved&nta.

Eckhart, while recognising this desire for God or
this love of God as a preparatory step, takes a much
higher view of the true relation between soul and
God. That ray of the Godhead, which he calls the
spirit of the soul and many other names, such as spark
(Funklein), root , spring , also (rvvTtfpr)<n$, in fact, the
real Self of man, is the common ground of God and
the soul. In it God and the soul are always one
potentially, and they become one actually when the
Son is born in the soul of man, that is when the soul
has discovered its eternal oneness with God. In order
that God-may enter the soul, everything else must
first be thrown out of it, everything sinful, but also
every kind of attachment to the things of this world.
Lastly, there must be a complete surrender of our own
self. In order to live in God, man must die to him-
self, till his will is swallowed up in God’s will. There
must be perfect stillness in the soul before God can
whisper His word into it, before the light of God can

shine in the soul and transform the soul into God.

Birth of the Son.

When man has thus become the son of God, it is
said that the Son of God is bom in him, and his soul

CHBISTIAX THEOSOPHY.

525

is at rest. You will have observed in all this the
fundamental idea of the Vedanta, that by lvmoval of
nescience the individual soul recovers its true nature,
as identical with the Divine soul; nor can it have
escaped you on the other side how many expressions
are used by Eckhart which are perfectly familiar to
us from the Neo-Platonists, and from the Gospel of
St. John, which can convey their true meaning to
those only wdio know their origin and their history.

Passages from tke Pourtlx Gospel.

The passages on which Eckhart relies and to which
he often appeals are: ‘He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father 5 (xiv. 9) ; £ I am in the Father, and the
Father in me’ (xiv. 10); ‘Ko man cometh unto the
Father, but by me ’ (xiv. 6) ; £ This is life eternal, that
they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom Thou hast sent 5 (xvii. 3). And again :
‘And now, 0 Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own
Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the
world was ; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father,
art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in
us 5 (xvii. 5, 21).

These are the deepest notes that vibrate through the
whole of Eckhart’s Christianity, and though their true
meaning had been explained long before Eckhart’s
time, by the great scholastic thinkers, such as Thomas
Aquinas himself, the two St. Victors, Bonaventura,
and others, seldom had their deepest purport been so
powerfully brought out as by Master Eckhart, in his
teaching of true spiritual Christianity. Dr. Denifle
is no doubt quite right in showing how much of this
spiritual Christianity may be found in the writings of

526

LECTURE XV.

those whom it is the fashion to call rather con-
temptuously, mere schoolmen. But he hardly does
fulljusticeto Eekhart’s personality. Not every school-
man was a vir sanctus , not every Dominican preacher
was so unworldly, so full of love and compassion for
his fellow-creatures as Eckhart was. And though his
Latin terminology may be called more accurate and
vigorous than his German utterances, there is a

o %

warmth and homeliness in his German sermons which,
to my mind at least, the colder Latin seems to destroy.
Dr. Denifld is no doubt quite right in claiming Eckhart
as a scholastic and as a Roman Catholic, but he would
probably allow his heresies at least to be those of the
German mystic.

Objections to Mystic Religion.

We have observed already a number of striking
analogies between the spirit of mystic Christianity of
the fourteenth century and that of the Ved&nta-
philosophy in India. It is curious that the attacks
also to which both systems have been exposed, and
the dangers which have been pointed out as inherent
in them, are almost identical in India and in Ger-
many.

Excessive Asceticism.

It is well known that a very severe asceticism was
strongly advocated and widely practised by the fol-
lowers of both systems. Here again there can, of
course, be no idea of borrowing or even of any indirect
influence. If we can understand that asceticism was
natural to the believers in the Upanishads in India,
we shall be equally able to understand the motives

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

527

which, led Master Eekhart and his friends to mortify
the flesh, and to live as much as possible a life of
solitude and retirement from the world.

That body and soul are antagonistic can hardly be
doubted. Plato and other Greek philosophers were
well aware that the body may become too much
for the soul, obscuring the rational and quickening
the animal desires. Even when the passions of the
flesh do not degenerate into actual excess, they are
apt to dissipate and weaken the powers of the mind.
Hence we find from very early times and in almost all
parts of the world a tendency on the part of profound
thinkers to subdue the flesh in order to free the spirit.
Nor can we doubt the concurrent testimony of so
many authorities that by abstinence from food, drink,
and other sensual enjoyments, the energies of the
spirit are strengthened 1 . This is particularly the
case with that spiritual energy which is occupied with
religion. Of course, like everything else, this as-
cetieism, though excellent in itself, is liable to mis-
chievous exaggeration, and has led in fact to terrible
excesses. I am not inclined to doubt the testimony
of trustworthy witnesses that by fasting and by even
a more painful chastening of the body, the mind may
be raised to more intense activity. Nor can I resist
the evidence that by certain exercises, such as peculiar
modes of regulating the breathing, keeping the body
in certain postures, and fixing the sight on certain
objects, a violent exaltation of our nervous system
may be produced which quickens our imaginations,
and enables us to see and conceive objects which are

1 The Sanskrit term urdhvaretas, applied to ascetics, is very
significant.

528

LECTURE XV,

beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. I believe that
the best physiologists are quite aware of all this, and
perfectly able to account for it; and it would be
carrying scepticism too far, were we to decline to
accept the accounts given us by the persons themselves
of their beatific visions, or by trustworthy witnesses.
On the other hand, it is perfectly well known that
when these ascetic tendencies once break out, they are
soon by mere emulation carried to such extremes that
they produce a diseased state both of body and of
mind, so that we have to deal no longer with inspired
or ecstatic saints, but with hysterical and half-de-
lirious patients.

Another danger is an almost irresistible temptation
to imposition and fraud on the part of religious
ascetics, so that it requires the most discriminating
judgment before we are able to distinguish between
real, though abnormal, visions, and intentional or half-
intentional falsehood.

The penances which Indian ascetics inflict on them-
selves have often been described by eye-witnesses
whose bona fides cannot be doubted, and I must say
that the straightforward way in which they are
treated in some of the ancient text-books, makes one
feel inclined to believe almost anything that these
ancient martyrs are said to have suffered and to have
done, not excluding their power of levitation. But we
also see, both in India and in Germany, a strong
revulsion of feeling, and protests are not wanting,
emanating from high authorities, against an excessive
mortification of the flesh. One case is most interesting.
We are told that Buddha, before he became Buddha,
went through the most terrible penances, living with

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

529

the Brahmanic hermits in the forest. But after a time
he became convinced of the uselessness, nay of the
mischievousness of this system, and it is one of the
characteristic features of his teaching that he declared
these extreme self-inflicted toi'tures useless for the
attainment of true knowledge, and advised a Via
media between extreme asceticism on one side and
worldliness on the other, as the true way to enlighten-
ment and beatitude.

Much the same protest was made by Eckliart
and Tauler in trying to restrain their enthusiastic
pupils. They both recommended a complete sur-
render of all the goods of this world; poverty and
suffering were in their eyes the greatest help to
a truly spiritual life ; not to be attached to this world
was the primary condition for enabling God to appear
again in the soul of man, or, as they expressed it,
for facilitating the birth of the Son of God in man.
But with all ‘that, they wished most strongly to see
the love of God manifested in life by acts of loving-
kindness to our fellow-creatures. They believed that
it was quite possible to take part In the practical
Work of life, and yet to maintain a perfect tranquillity
and stillness of the soul within. Both Eckhart and
Tauler took a prominent and active share In the affairs
of Church and State, both tried to introduce much-
needed reforms in the life of the clergy and the laity.
Stillness and silence were recommended, because it is
only when all passions are stifled and all worldly
desires silenced that the Word of God can be heard In
the soul. A certain discipline of the body was there-
fore encouraged, but only as a means toward an end.
Extreme penances, even when they were supposed to
( 4 ) M m

530

LECTURE XV.

lead to beatific visions of the Godhead, were strongly
discouraged. The original oneness of the human soul
with God is accepted by all German mystics as the
fundamental article of the Christian faith, but they
differ as to the means by which that oneness may be
restored. The speculative school depends on know-
ledge only. They hold that what we know ourselves
to be, we are ipso facto , and they therefore lay the
chief stress on the acquisition of knowledge. The
ascetic school depends on penances and mortifications,
by which the soul is to gain complete freedom from
the body, till it rises in the end to a vision of God, to
a return of the soul to God, to a reunion with God.

'What is penance in reality and truth*?’ Tauler
asks. c It is nothing,’ he answers, ‘ but a real and
true turning away from all that is not God, and a
real and true turning towards the pure and true good,
which is called God and is God. He who has that
and does that, does more than penance.’ And again :

‘ Let those who torture the poor flesh learn this. What
has the poor flesh done to thee ? Kill sin, but do not
kill the flesh ! ’

Tauler discourages even confession and other merely
outward acts of religion. ‘ It is of no use,’ he says,
c to run to the Father Confessor after having com-
mitted a sin.’ Confess to God, he says, with real
repentance. Unless you do this and flee from sin,
even the Pope with all his Cardinals cannot absolve
you, for the Father Confessor has no power over sin.
Here we can clearly hear the distant rumblings of
the Reformation.

But, though these excessive penances could do no
good, they are nevertheless interesting to us as

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

531

showing at all events what terrible earnestness
there was among the followers of the Vedanta
as well as among the disciples of Eekhart and
Tauler. We read of Suso, one of the most sweet-
minded of German mystics, that during thirty years
he never spoke a word during dinner. During six-
teen years he walked about and slept in a shirt
studded with 150 sharp nails, and wore gloves with
sharp blades inside. He slept on a wooden cross, his
arms extended and the back pierced with thirty nails.
His bedstead was an old door, his covering a thin
mat of reeds, while his cloak left the feet exposed to
the frost. He ate but once a day, and he avoided fish
and eggs when fasting. He allowed himself so little
drink that his tongue became dry and hard, and he
tried to soften it with a drop from the Holy Water in
Church. His friend Tauler strongly disapproved of
these violent measures, and at last Suso yielded, but
not before be had utterly ruined bis health. He
then began to write, and nothing can be sweeter
and more subdued, more pure and loving than his
writings. That men in such a state should see
visions, is not to be wondered at. They constantly
speak of them as matters perfectly well known.
Even Tauler, though he warns against them, does
not doubt their possibility or reality. He relates
some in Ms own sermons, but be is fully aware of
the danger of self-deceit. s Those who have to do
with images and visions/ he says 1 > ‘are much deceived,
for they come often from the devil, and in our time
more than ever. For truth has been revealed and
discovered to us in Holy Writ, and it is not necessary

1 Carl Schmidt, Johannes Tauler von Strassburg, p. 138.
f Mma

632

LECTURE XV.

therefore that truth should be revealed to us in any
other way ; and he who takes truth elsewhere but
from Holy Writ, is straying from the holy faith, and
his life is not worth much.’

Sinlessness.

An other even greater danger was discovered by
the adversaries both of the Vedanta and of Master
Eekhart’s philosophy. It is not difficult to under-
stand that human beings who had completely over-
come their passions and who had no desires but to
remain united with the Divine Spirit, should have
been declared incapable of sin. In one sense they
were. But this superiority to all temptation was
soon interpreted in a new sense, namely that no sin
could really touch such beings, and that even if they
should break any human laws, their soul would not be
affected by it. One sees well enough what was intended,
namely that many of the distinctions between good
and evil were distinctions for this world only, and
that in a higher life these distinctions would vanish.

We read in the Brib. Up. IV. 4, 23: ‘This eternal
greatness of Brahman does not grow larger by works,
nor does it grow smaller. Let man try to find the trace
of Brahman, for having found it, he is not sullied by
any evil deed.’ The Bhagavadgita also is full of this
sentiment, as, for instance, V. 7 : ‘He who is possessed
of devotion, whose self is pure, who has restrained
Ms self, and who has controlled his senses, and who
identifies his self with every being, that is, who loves
Ms neighbour as himself, is not tainted, though he per-
forms acts.’ And then again : ‘ The pian of devotion
who knows the truth, thinks he does nothing at all

CIIItlSTIAN THEOSOPHY.

533

when lie sees, hears, touches, smells, eats, moves sleeps,
breathes, talks, takes, opens or closes the eyelids ; he
holds that the senses only deal with the objects of the
senses. He who, casting off all attachment, perform >
actions, dedicating them to Brahman, is not tainted
by sin, as the lotus leaf is not soiled by water.’

Tauler’s utterances go often quite as far, though
he tries in other places to qualify them and to render
them innocuous. ‘ Having obtained union with Gudf
he says, ‘a man is not only preserved from sin, and
beyond the reach of temptation, but all sins which he
has commit. ed without his will, cannot pollute him ;
on the contrary, they help him to purify himself.’
Now it is quite true that Tauler himself often in-
veighs against those who called themselves the
Brothers of the Free Spirit, and who maintained that
no sin which they committed could touch them, yet
it must be admitted that his own teaching gave a
certain countenance to their extravagances.

You may remember that the Vedantists too allowed
the possibility of men even in this life obtaining per-
fect freedom and union with Brahman ((/ivanmukti),
just as some of the mystics allowed that there was a
possibility of a really poor soul, that is a soul freed
from all attachments, and without anything that he
could call his own, obtaining union with God even
while in this mortal body. Still this ecstatic state of
union with God was looked upon as an exception,
and lasted for short moments only, while real beati-
tude could only begin in the next life, and after a
complete release from the body. Hence so long as
the soul is imprisoned in the body, its sinlessness
could be considered as problematical only, and both

534

LECTUEE XV.

in Germany and in India saintly hypocrisy had to he
reproved and was reproved in the strongest terms.

Want of Reverence for God.

There is one more charge that has been brought
against all mystics, but against the mediaeval far
more than against the Indian mystics. They were
accused of lowering the deity by bringing it down to
the level of humanity, and even identifying the
human and divine natures. Here, however, we must
hear both sides, and see that they use the same
language and really understand what they say. No
word has so many meanings as God. If people con-
ceive God as a kind of Jupiter, or even as a Jehovah,
then the idea of a Son of God can only be considered
blasphemous, as it was by the Jews, or can only be
rendered palatable to the human understanding in the
form of characters such as Herakles or Dionysus.
So long as such ideas of the Godhead and its relation
to humanity are entertained, and we know that they
were entertained even by Christian theologians, it
was but natural that a claim on the part of humanity
to participate in the nature of the divine should have
excited horror and disgust. But after the Deity had
been freed from its mythological character, after the
human mind, whether in India or elsewhere, had once
realised the fact, that God was all in all, that there
could be nothing beside God, that there could be one
Infinite only, not two, the conclusion that the human
soul also belonged to God was inevitable. It was
for religion to define the true relation between God
and man, and you may remember from my first
course of Lectures, how some high authorities have
defined all religion to be the perception of this very

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 535

relation between God and man. Nothing can be
said against this definition, if only we clearly see
that this recognition of a relation between the
Divine and the Human must be preceded by what
I called the perception of the infinite in nature" and of
the infinite in man, and the final recognition of their
oneness. I wish indeed that our etymological con-
science allowed us to derive relujio with Lactantius
and others from religare, to re-bind or re-unite, for in
that case religio would from the first have meant what
it means at last, a re-uniting of the soul with God.

This re-union can take place in two ways only;
either as a restoration of that original onemss
which for a time was forgotten through darkness or
nescience, or as an approach and surrender of the soul
to God in love, without any attempt at explaining
the separation of the soul from God, or its indepen-
dent subsistence for a time, or its final approach to
and union with God. And here it seems to me that
Christianity, if properly understood, has discovered
the best possible expression. Every expression in
human language can of course he metaphorical only,
and so is the expression of divine sonship, yet it
clearly conveys what is wanted, identity of substance
and difference of form. The identity of substance is
clearly expressed by St. Paul when he says (Acts xvii.
28) that we live and move and have our being in
God, and it is very significant that it was exactly for
this, the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, that
St, Paul appealed to the testimony of non-Christian
prophets also, for he adds, as if to mark his own deep
regard for Natural and Universal Religion, * as certain
also of your own poets have said/

536

LECTURE XV.

The difference in form is expressed by the very
name of Son. Though the concept of Father is
impossible without that of Son, and the concept of
Son impossible without that of Father, yet Christ
Himself, after saying, 4 1 and My Father are one'
(St. John x. 30), adds (xiv. 28), £ My Father is greater
than 1/ Thus the pre-eminence of the Father is
secured, whether we adopt the simple language of
St. John, or the philosophical terminology of Diony-
sius and his followers.

A much greater difficulty has been felt by some
Christian theologians in fixing the oneness and yet
difference between the Son of God and humanity at
large. It was not thought robbery that the Son should
be equal with the Father (Phil. ii. 6), but it was thought
robbery to make human nature equal with that of the
Son. Many were frightened by the thought that the
Son of God should thus be degraded to a mere man .
Is there not a blasphemy against humanity also, and
is it not blasphemous to speak of a mere mam What
can be the meaning of a mere man , if we once have
recognised the divine essence in him, if we once
believe that unless we are of God, we are nothing.
If we once allow ourselves to speak of a mere man,
others will soon speak of a mere God.

Surely no one was more humble than Master
Eckhart and Tauler, no one showed more reverence
for the Son than they who had looked so deeply into
the true nature of divine sonship. But they would
not allow the clear statements of the New Testament
to be argued away by hair-splitting theologians.
They would not accept the words of Christ except in
their literal and natural sense? They quoted the

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

537

verses : 4 That they all may be one ; as Thou, Father,
art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may he one in
us ’ (St. John xvii. 21). And again, 'The glory which
Thou gavest Me I have given them ; that they may he
one, even as we are one ’ (St. J ohn xvii. 22 ; see also St.
John xiv. 2, 3). These words, they maintain, can have
one meaning only. Nor will they allow any liberties to
be taken with the clear words of St. Paul (Rom. viih
16), 'The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit,
that we are the children of God : and if children, then
heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if
so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also
glorified together/ They protest against wrenching
the sayings of St. John from their natural and
manifest purpose, when he says : £ Beloved, we are the
sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall
be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we
shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is/
Many more passages to the same effect might be
quoted and have been quoted. Every one of them
has been deeply pondered by Eckhart and Ms friends,
and if it was a mere question of reverence for Christ,
nowhere was greater reverence shown to Him than in
the preaching of these Friends of God. But if they
had surrendered their belief in the true brotherhood
of Christ and man, they would have sacrificed what
seemed to them the very heart of Christianity. We
may make the fullest allowance for those who, from
reverence for God and for Christ and from the purest
motives, protest against claiming for man the full
brotherhood of Christ. But when they say that the
difference between Christ and mankind is one of kind,
and not of degree, they know not what they do, they

538

LECTURE XT.

nullify the whole of Christ’s teaching, and they deny
the Incarnation which they pretend to teach. Let the
difference of degree be as large as ever it can be be-
tween those who belong to the same kind, but to look
for one or two passages in the New Testament which
may possibly point to a difference in kind is surely
useless against the overwhelming weight of the evi-
dence that appeals to us from the very words of Christ.
We have lately been told, for instance, that Christ
never speaks of Our Father when including Himself,
and that when He taught His disciples to pray, Our
Father which art in heaven, He intentionally excluded
Himself. This might sound plausible in a court of
law, but what is it when confronted with the words
of Christ : 4 Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I
ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my
God, and your God.’ Was that also meant to imply
that His Father was not the same as their Father, and
their God not the same as His God ?

Religion, the Bridge "between the Finite and the Infinite.

It was the chief object of these four courses of Lec-
tures to prove that the yearning for union or unity
with God, which we saw as the highest goal in other
religions, finds its fullest recognition in Christianity,
if but properly understood, that is, if but treated his-
torically, and that it is inseparable from our belief in
man’s full brotherhood with Christ. However imper-
fect the forms may be in which that human yearning
• for God has found expression in different religions, it
has always been the deepest spring of all religion, and
the highest summit reached by Natural Religion. The
different bridges that have been thrown across the

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY,

539

gulf that seems to separate earth from heaven and
man from God, whether we call them Bifrost or
Jtinvatf or Es Sirat or any other name, may he more
or less crude and faulty, yet we may trust that many
a faithful soul has been carried across by them to a
better home. You may remember how in the Upani-
shads the Self had been recognised as the true bridge,
the best connecting link between the soul and God,
and the same idea meets us again and again in the
religions and philosophies of later times. It is quite
true that to speak of a bridge between man and God,
even if that bridge is called the Self, is but a meta-
phor. But how r can we speak of these things except in
metaphors? To return to God is a metaphor, to stand
before the throne of God is a metaphor, to be in
paradise with Christ is a metaphor.

Even those who object to the metaphor of a bridge
between earth and heaven, between man and God,
and who consider the highest lesson of Theosophy to
be the perception of the eternal oneness of human and
divine nature, must have recourse to metaphor to
make their meaning clear. The metaphor which is
almost universal, which we find in the Vedanta, among
the Sufis, among the German Mystics, nay, even as
late as the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth
century, is that of the sun and its rays.

The sun, as they all say, is not the sun, unless it
shines forth ; and God is not God, unless He shines
forth, unless He manifests Himself.

All the rays of the sun are of the sun, they can never
be separated from it, though their oneness with the
source of light may for a time be obscured by inter-
vening darkness. All the rays of God, every soul,

540

LECTUEE XV*

every son of God, is of God ; they cannot be separated
from God, though their oneness with the Divine
Source may for a time be obscured by selfhood,
passion, and sin.

Every ray is different from the other rays; yet
there cannot be any substantial difference between
them. Each soul is different from the other souls ;
yet there cannot be any substantial difference between
them.

As soon as the intervening darkness is removed,
each ray is seen to be a part of the sun, and yet apart
from it and from the other rays. As soon as the
intervening ignorance is removed, each soul knows
itself to be a part of God, and yet apart from God
and from the other souls.

No ray is lost, and though it seems to be a ray by
itself, it remains for ever what it has always been, not
separated from the light, nor lost in the light, but
ever present in the sun. No soul is lost, and though
it seems to be a soul by itself, it remains for ever
what it always has been, not separated from God,
not lost in God, but ever present in God.

And lastly, as from the sun there flows forth not
only light, but also warmth, so from God there pro-
ceeds not only the light of knowledge, but also the
warmth of love, love of the Father and love of the
Son, nay love of all the sons of the eternal Father.

But is there no difference at all between the sun
and the rays ? Yes, there is. The sun alone sends out
its rays, and God alone sends out His souls. Causality,
call 1 ' it creation or emanation, belongs to God alone,
not to His rays or to His souls.

These are world-old metaphors, yet they remain

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

541

ever new and true, and we meet with them once more
in the speculations of the Cambridge Platonics. Tims
Henry More says :

‘I came from God. am an immortal ray
Of God ; 0 joy ! and back to God shall so.*

Again :

‘Hence the soul’s nature we may plainly see,

A beam it is of th* Intellectual Sun,

A ray indeed of that Aeternitv;

Hut such a ray as when it first outshone.

From a free light its shining date begun.’

I hope I have thus carried out the simple plan of
my Lectures, as I laid it down from the first. My first
course was meant as an introduction, fixing the
historical standpoint from which religions should be
studied, and giving certain definitions on which there
ought to be no misunderstanding between teachers
and hearers. Then taking a survey of the enormous
mass of religious thought that lies before the eyes of
the historian in -chaotic confusion, I tried to show that
there were in it two principal currents, one repre-
senting the search after something more than finite
or phenomenal in nature, which I called Physical
Religion , the other representing the search after
something more than finite or phenomenal in the soul
of man, Anthropological Religion . In this my last
course, it has been my chief endeavour to show how
these two currents always strive to meet and do meet
in the end in what has been called Theosophy or
Psychological Religion , helping us to the perception
of the essential unity of the soul with God. Both
this striving to meet and the final union have found,
I think, their most perfect expression in Christianity.
The striving of the soul to meet God is expressed in

542

LECTUEE XV.

the Love of God, on which hang all the Laws and the
Prophets ; the final union is expressed in our being, in
the true sense of the word, the sons of God. That
sonship may be obtained by different ways, by none
so truly as what Master Eckhart called the surrender
of our will to the Will of God. You may remember
how this was the very definition which your own
revered Principal has given of the true meaning of
religion; and if the true meaning of religion is the
highest purpose of religion, you will see how, after
a toilsome journey, the historian of religion arrives in
the end at the same summit which the philosopher of
religion has chosen from the first as his own.

In conclusion I must once more thank the Principal
and the Senate of this University for the honour they
have done me in electing me twice to this important
office of Gifford Lecturer, and for having given me an
opportunity of putting together the last results of my
life-long studies in the religions and philosophies of
the world. I know full well that some of these results
have given pain to some learned theologians. Still I
believe it would have given them far greater pain if
they had suspected me of any want of sincerity,
whether in keeping back any of the facts which a
study of the Sacred Books of the World has brought
to light, or in hiding the convictions to which these
facts have irresistibly led me.

There are different ways in which we can show true
faith and real reverence for religion. What would
you say, if you saw a strong and powerful oak-tree,
enclosed by tiny props to keep it from falling, made
hideous by scarecrows to drive away the birds, or

CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY.

543

shielded by flimsy screens to protect it from the air and
the light of heaven ? Would you not feel that it was
an indignity to the giant of the forest? Would you
not feel called upon to pull out the tiny props, and let
the oak face the gales, and after every gale cling more
strongly to the earth, and send its roots more deeply
into the rock beneath ? Would you not throw away
the scarecrows and let the birds build their nests on
its strong branches ? Would you not feel moved to
tear off the screens, and let the wind of heaven
shake its branches, and the light from heaven warm
and brighten its dark foliage? This is what I feel
about religion, yea about the Christian religion, if but
properly understood. It does not want these tiny
props or those hideous scarecrows or useless apolo-
gies. If they ever were wanted, they are not wanted
noiv, whether you call them physical miracles, or
literal inspiration, or Papal infallibility ; they are
now an affront, a dishonour to the majesty of truth.
I do not believe in human infallibility, least of all,
in Papal infallibility. I do not believe in professorial
infallibility, least of all in that of your Gifford lecturer.
We are all fallible, and we are fallible either in our
facts, or in the deductions which we draw from them.
If therefore any of my learned critics will tell me which
of my facts are wrong, or which of my conclusions
faulty, let me assure them, that though I am now a
very old Professor, I shall always count those among
my best friends who will not mind the trouble of
supplying me with new facts, or of pointing out where
facts have been wrongly stated by me, or who will
correct any arguments that may seem to them to
offend against the sacred laws of logic, .y

544

Bnh, Ar. Up.
VI. 2, 13.

arAis

ahar

&pbryam&MaA
pakshaA
sh.*»i masfiA
(udak)
devalokaA
udityaA
vaidyutam
purusho^mana-
yah

brahmalokaA

(na punar avrit*
ti/i)

dhftmaA

ratriA.

apakshiyamawaA

pakshaA

sha?i masaA (dak-
shinft)
pitnlokaA
AandraA
annam

akfuaA

vayuA

vnshiiA

annam

purushaA, yosh&
<fcc.

STATIONS OF THE JOURNEY AFTEE

A’A-Ind. Up.

ATAHnd. Up.

Kausbit. Up.

Taitt. Up.

V. 10, 1.

IV. 15, 5.

I. 2.

1. 6.

—

arAis

Aandramas

agniA

abar

aparapakshaA

Vfyllfl

apuryam&naA

&pfu'yama«aA

vrishtik

MisyaA

pakshaA

paksbaA

brabma

sbaw mtisaA
(udak)

shan mas&A
(udak)

(praty%&yate)

sawvatsaraA

samyatsaraA

—

adityaA

AandramSs

Aandram§,s

Aandramas

devaydnaA

Yidvut

vidyut

agnilokaA

purusliosmana-

vaA

purusho s mOlna-
vaA

vayulokaA

brabma

brahma (devapa-
thaA)

varunalokaA

—

(na punar avnt-

indralokaA

dhftmaA

ratriA

aparapakshaA

tiA)

prswapatilokaA

brabmalokaA

shaw masftA
(daksh.)
pitrilokaA
akasaA
Aandram&s
(SomaA)
annam
ftk&raA
rayuA
dhbmaA
abhram

meghaA

vrishfift

•vrihiyava.

annam

545

DEATH ACCORDING TO THE UPANISHAD3.

Brth.Ar.Fp.
V. lit, 1.

Prama Up.

i. 9.

Kh&nd. Up.
VIII. 13.

Hwh?. Up.

I. £, 1L

K1A nd. U'i.
MU. 0, 5.

y* -::r. Ui:lh.
bp VI.

v&yuA

fldityuA

AamiraA

lokaA

AandramDs
(punar UvartaA)
dditva/i

(na punar &var-
ta /*)

sv&ma h (moon)
jrabaliiA (sun)
bralmialoka/i

suryadvdram

puruaiiOJ-mnUi/i

ra.MjiayaA

fiditya/j (!r>-
■kad vAraiu)

uttui.lt. 1 , a/ 1 ,
b*dhi..apathaA

Kuiraxu th.lr.im
brahmaluko/*

I'D'.'i tatiA

INDEX.

ABD AL RAZZAK, page 344.
Abel, 376.

Abelard and St. Bernard, 492.
Abraham, as only son of God, 366,
4 ° 9 *

— allegorical meaning of, 376.

— and Isaac, 37S.

Absolute, absorption in the, 427.

— Being, one, 314.

Abstract nouns, 78.

Abu Jafir Attavari, 38.

Abu Said Abut Oheir, founder of
Sufiism, 343.

Abu Yasid and Junaid, 344.
Academy, the, 384.

Accadian prayer, 14.

Achaemenian inscriptions, 44.

Acta Archelai, 441.

Activity, acts of, 162.

A darn, the son of God, 366.

— explained by Philo, 376.

Adam’s rib, Philo’s interpretation

of, 376.

Adams, 86, 119.

Adevism, 295.

Adhyayas, 98.

Aditi, sons of, 17.

~ man restored to, by Agni, 140.
Aditya, 17.

Adjectives, 78.

Adrasteia, 64 n.

Adrian I, 465.

Adyton of the soul, 428.

Aelian, 145 n.

Aeon, meaning of, 473 n.

Aeons of Valentinian, 473 «.
Aeshm, 201-202.

Afring&n, the three, 43.

Agm, 50, isi, 130, 135, 192, 234-
2 35 -

— real purpose of the biography of,
5 . 6 , 8 -

— as fire, 29.

— the visible and invisible, 154.
Agniloka, the world of Agni, 116.
Agnosis, universal, 321.

Agnostic, modern, and the Hindus,

320-321.

Aham, ego, 24S-249.

Ahana, 178.

Ahl alyakyn, 344.

Ahmi yat ahmi, 52, 187 n.

— Zend = asmi, 8k., 55 u.
Ahriman, in the Gathas, 45.

— word not known to early Greek
writers, 45.

— known to late Greek and Roman
writers, 45.

— and Ormazd, 183.

not mentioned as opponents

by Darius, 183.

— his council of six, 186.

Ahura, 18, 19, 20.

— names of, 54, 55.

— Zarathushtra’s talk with, 54, 55.
Ahura Mazda, 18, 52, 180, 181, 183,

188, 189, 203.

as the Supreme Being, 51.

the living God, 53.

gives the soul the food destined

for the good, 116 n.

his discourse on guardian an-
gels, 205-207.

acts by the Fravashis, 2 06.

Airyaman, Yedic Aryaman, 182.
Aitutakian heaven, 228, 229.

N n 2

548

INDEX.

Akaanga, 229, 230.

Ak&sa, ether, 300.

Akem man6, 186.

AlAar&f, 173.

Albertus Magnus, 466, 504.
Albigenses, 503.

— called Katliari, 504.

Alexander, 45, 69.

— destroyed some of the sacred

MSS. of the Persians, 38.

— had the Zend Avesta translated

into Greek, 39.

Alexandria, contract between Aryan
and Semitic thought at, ix.

— Jewish school of, and its influ-

ence on Christianity, 371, 374.

— the meeting-place of Jewish and

Greek thought, 399.

of Jewish and Christian faith,

399-

Alexandrian Christianity, St. Cle-
ment, 433.

— Jews and Greek religion, 82.
Allah, the God of Power, 347, 349,

350.

Allegorical interpretations, 377.
Alogoi, the, 452.

— denied the Logos, 453.

— opposed the Pourth Gospel, 453.
Alphabetic writing, 31.

Amalrich, 515.

Ambrosius, 434,

Amelius, 429.

AmeretacZ (Ainardad), immortality,
186.

Ameretafc, 49.

American, English, and Irish cus-
toms, 62.

Ameshaspentas of the Avesta, 186,
188, 203.

Amitaw/as, throne, 121, 123, 124.

— its feet and sides and furniture,

123.

Ammon, 14.

Amoureux, French, and amourou,
Mandriiu, 60.

Amphiboly, 4T 6 n.

AmHta, 79.

Anaclet II, Antipope, 492.

Anahita, 206.

Analogical method, vii.

— treatment, 322.

Ananda, blessedness, 94.
Anastasius, librarian, 466.
Anaxagoras, 377, 380, 384, 389,

410, 430.

Anaximander, Infinite of, 400.
Ancient Prayers, 12.

— books lost, 57.

— religions and philosophies, how

to compare, 58.

Angel of Jehovah, 405.

— wrestling with Jacob, 405.
Angels, qualities of Ormazd, 185.

— of 0. T. and the Ameshaspentas

of the Avesta, 187.

— Philo called the Logoi, 401, 406,

4 I 3*

— a Jewish conception, 405.

— roots of the, 405.

— of Origen, 451, 473.

— hierarchies of, 406, 469, 473,

478.

— ■ spoken of as Gods, 471.

— St. Augustine on, 472.

— in happiness, 475.

— modern belief in, chiefly derived

from Dionysius, 476.

Angrd Mainyu or Ahriman, 45, 183,
184, 185, 203.

Animal bodies, human souls migrat-
ing into, 217, 225, 231.

moral grounds of this belief,

217, 218.

Animism, 152, 156.

— not connected with Metempsy-

chosis, 153.

Annihilation, not known in the Big-
veda, 1 66.
avSparos, 361.

Antaryamin, 315.

Anthropological religion, 89, 90, 106,
160, 541.

Anthropology, 61.
Anthropomorphism, 153.
avOpcviros d€OV, 415.

Antioch, Synod of, 412.

[ Anumana, deduction, 102, 293.

INDEX.

549

Aparuflita, 122,

Apeiron, formless matter, 395, 400.
Aphrodite, 63, 76.
aTrXoccris, 4S2.

Apocryphal books of New Testa-
ment, 35.
dmios, 437.

Apologetes, the early, xiii, 455.
Apollo, 235.

Apollon, 64 n.
am&Tracrpa, 420, 423.
cnroOzcacris, 4X2.

Approach to God, 524.

Apsaras, 121, 122, 163, 199.
Apnleius on Daimones, 470.
Aphrva, 306.

Ara, lake, 121, 122, 124.

from ari, enemy, 142.

Arabic, translations of Greek books
into, 324.

Archangels, 475.
apxxpcvs, 415.

Archimedes, 70.

Areimanios, 45.

Arif, name for Sufis, 344.

Aristides on J upiter, 1 1 .

Aristokles, 83.

Aristokrates, son of Hipparchus, 83.
Aristotle, S3, 102, 372, 380, 384,395,
430, 512, 521.

— knew the word Areimanios, 45.

— Zeus of, 395.

the Prime Mover of, 395, 397.

— his transcendent Godhead, 396.
Aristoxenos, 83, 84.

Armaiti, Aramati, 182, 186.

Arnold of Brescia, 492.
Artakshatar, (Ardeshir), 40.
Article, the, 78.

’Ar&f or Marifat, 348.

Aryan separation, 72.

— religion and mythology, common,

72-74.

— nations, 74.

— civilisation, 74.

— atmosphere in Indian and Greek

philosophies, 77.

— words, common, 78, 79*
Asar-mula-dag, 14.

A sat, 96.

Ascetic school, 530.

— practices, 32^.

Ascetics, Sk. name for, 527

— visions of, 52S.

— fraud among, 52S.

— Indian, 5 28.

— aules^ne^s, 532.

Asceticism of the 345.

— excessive, 526.

— dangers of, 527, 534.

A ses, the As-bni, 169.

Asha, righteousness, 44.

— vahishta, 186.

Asmodeus, At* s lima daeva in Tollt,

187- e

— proves intercourse between Jews
A and Per.-ians, 187.

Asraya, abode of the soul, 306.
Asti, !<rn, o? 4 , ist, 78.

AstovfohW, 201, 202.

Astral body, 306,

Asu, breath, Sk., 53, 248.

Asura Varumi or Ahura Mazda. 49.
Asura, and as, to be, Sanskrit, 53.

— from asu, 18 1.

— and Deva, l8r.

— bad sense of, 181.

— highest deity in the Avesta, 3 Sr.
Asuras, change of meaning of, 187.

— and Suras, 1S7.

fights between, 188.

— non-gods, 188.

-7” opponents of theDevas, 250, 251.
A tar, fire, 1S0.

Athanasius on oneness with God,
323 -

— on the Logos made man, 421.

— a man of classical learning, 434.

— Dionysius unknown to, 463.
Atharva-veda, 138, 140.

— Hell known in the, 167.
Atharvan, 65.

Atheism, 295.

Athem, Odem, 249.

Athenagoras on the Son of God,
xiii.

— Greek philosopher, 436, 451.

— on the Logos, 437.

550

INDEX.

Athenians and Atlantidae, myth of,
82.

Atiu, chiefs of, mourning for the
dead, 227.

Atman, 248, 249, 250, 257, 272.

— • and Brahman one, 94, 308.

— the Self, 155, 249, 363, 364.

— the true bridge, 167.

— A.S. sedm, 0 . H. G. adum, 249.

— most abstract name for the divine

in man, 249.

— its relation to Brahman, 262.

— unchanged amid the changes of

the world, 272.

— Highest, 291.

— not lost in Brahman, 310.

— oneness with Brahman, 330.
Attar, 345.

Attic Moses, name for Plato, 342,
A 415.

Atftrp&d, the high priest, author
or finisher of the DinkawZ, 40,

4 1 *

Augustinus, 434.

Afiharmazd, first thought of, 56.
avros, 249.

Avaiki, the spirit world, 228, 229.

A vesta, 35, 36.

— the small, 43.

— and 0 . T., relation between, 47.

— on the soul entering Paradise,

115 n.

— religion of, misrepresented, 179.

— and Veda, names shared in com-

mon by, 182.

— dualism of, 185.

— immortality of the soul in the,

190,

— and Veda, common background

of, 203.

Avesta-Zend, difficult, 179.

Avestic prayer, 18.

— language continued to be long

understood, 47.

— religion a mixture, 183.

— a secondary stage from the Vedic

religion, 189.

— religion, ethical, 190.

Avicenna, 509.

Avidya or Nescience, 292, 298, 302,
314-316, 319, 320-321.

— called Maya, 303.

— /Sankara's view of, 318.

— to know it is the highest wisdom,

318*

BABYLONIAN prayer, 15.

— religion, works on, 109.

Bactria, Buddhists in, 46, 46 n.
Badar&yam, 99, 100, 101, 116 n.,

3 ° 6 .

— early authorities quoted by, 100,

100 n.

— on the soul after death, 1 16, 1 16 n.
Bad souls become animals, 156.
Bayacrrava, 182.

Balavarman, 135.

Baptised, Communicants, Monks,

477-

Baptism of Christ, 442, 443.

— Eucharist, and Chrism, 477.
Baptismal formula, 436.

Baresman, Barsom, 240.

Barh, root, 242.

Barnabas, 454.

Barrow on Love, 351-353.

Basil, 434.

Basilides, 396.

— his non-existent God, 396.
Bastholin, 75.

Bastian, 75.

Beatific visions, 527, 528.
Beautiful, the, in the soul, 433.

— the, the True, the Divine, 433.
Beauty, in the Phaedrus, 343.
Beginning, the. different accounts

of, in the Upanishads, 96.
Behisttin, 182.

Behram and Behr&m Yasht, 182.
Bellerophon, 64 n.

Berchtold of Begensburg, 502, 503.

— his sermons and vision, 502.
Beseelung, animism, 152.

Beyond, an invisible, vii.

— the, 168, 361.

Bhadrapada, 145.

Bhaga, solar deity, 182.
Bh&gavata, the, 354.

IXDEX.

551

Blied abheda va da and Satyabheda-
vuda, 275, 276.

Bhikshu, 325, 330.

Bible, J ews and Christians ashamed
of their, 375.

— • a forbidden book, 479.

— early German translations of, 503,
learnt by heart, 504.

Bi frost, the bridge, 168, 174, 539.

— only three colours in, 171.

Bigg, Dr., xv, 90 374 n , 375 n,,

379 n., 381 n., 396 n., 402 n.,
407 n., 436 7 i., 438 n 449 n.,
473 »•

— on Clement’s idea of Christ, 444.

— on Origen, 458.

Bigot, derivation of, 507, 50S.

Birth of the Son in the soul, 516,
524 -

Bishop s, Priests, and Deacons, 477.
Black Death, 501.

Blood, community of, 61.

Bloomfield, 120 ?i.

Bodliayana, 100, 101, 313.

Body, the subtle and coarse, 296,
306.

— antagonistic to the soul, 527.

— subjection of, 527.

Boehtlingk, uo,ii5n.,ii6n., 117^.,

118 7 i. f 1 20 71., 128 n.

Bog, Slavonic God, 182.

Bohlen, 85.

Bonaventura, 499, 505, 525.
Boniface, viii, 509.

Bonn, home of ifekharfc, 509.
Book-writing, date of, 31.

Bopp, 73.

Borrowing of ideas and names
among ancient nations, 58.
BrahmaA-arya, 119, 129.
Brahma-shtras, 98.

world, 1 1 9, 120.

Brahma the highest order of good-
ness, 164.

Brahman, 105-108, 155, 247, 249,
308.

— and Atman, one, 94.

— the Self, 99.

— as the True, 115, 115 n .

Brahraan,worM of, 1 2 1, 1 2 / ), 1 29—130.

— and the departed, dialogue be-

tween, 159.

— and Ahuramazda, arrival cf the

si ml before, 203.

— neuter, mime for the hijhe-t

Godhead, J40, 241, 244, 24S.

— derivation of, 240.

— and bnhat, 24 2 n.

— means Veda, 240, 242.

— various meanings t>f, 240, 241.

— Vishnu and /Siva, 241.

— neut. changed to brahman mas.,

241, 243.

— as word, 242.

— change of meaning, 242.

— and brahman, 243.

— as neut. followed by ma.sc, forms,

2 43 -

— caste, 247.

— identity of the soul with, 272.

2S2, 283.

— and the individual soul, 275.

— approach of the soul to, 277. 27s,

279.

— later speculations on, 2 78.

— the Beal, 279.

— neuter, essence of all things, 279.

— nothing besides, 280.

— All in All, 280.

— being perfect the soul is so, 280.

— masculine and neuter, 283, 330,

517 .

— the whole world is, 286.

— modified personal, 290, 291, 292.

— the Highest, 290, 291, 293.

— Sfriras on, 291.

— is everything, 292.

— Indian sage asked to describe,

293.

— as sat, as £it, as ananda, 293.

— always subjective, 294.

— how men should believe in, 295.

— the world, emanation from, 295.

— presents itself as the world, 299.

— or the Infinite, everywhere, 304.

— we are, 294, 302.

— and Avidya the cause of the phe-

nomenal world, 303.

552

INDEX.

Brahman, is nothing and every-
thing, 312, 314.

— R&manutfa’s teaching about, 315.

— Ankara’s teaching about, 315.

— the Atman not lost in, 310.

— one, 311.

— Higher and Lower, 316, 317.

— is what really exists, 317.
Brahma«as, 156, 370-

— do not harmonise with the Upa-

nishads, 141.

Brahmanas, priests appropriating
sacrificial property, 162.

— transmigration of, 163.
Brahmanists and Buddhists, volu-
minous literature of, 179*

Brahmans mentioned by Eusebius,
46 n.

Bridge to another life, the. 167, 177.

— called Setus in the Mah£bharata,
^167.

— Atman the true, 167 n.

— among 1 ST orth- American Indians,

168.

— among the Mohammedans, 172.

— adopted by the Jews in Persia,

173 .

— among the Todas, 173.

not known in the Talmud, 174.

— known to peasants of Nibvre,

175 -

— of the Avesta and of the Upani-

shads, 194.

— between earth and heaven, 209.

— between God and man, 470, 539.
Brig 0’ Dread, 1 74.

— not same as Bifrost, 174.

— from crusaders, 175*
Brihad-aranyaka, 1 14, 117,118,125,

17 1 , 277.

Brihas-pati, Brahmawas-pati,' V a£as-
pati, 242.

Brothers of the free spirit, 533.

Bua tree, 229, 230.

Buddha left no MSS., 32.

— silence of, on the soul after death,

233 .

— the, 363.

— opposed excessive asceticism, 529.

Buddhism, no objective Deity in,

363-

— and Christianity, startling coin-

cidences, 369.

Buddhist Bhikshus, 369.

Buddhists, prayer unknown to the,
12.

— in Bactria, 46.

By water, 364 n .

CAIN, 376.

Cambridge Platonists, 323,539,541.

likeness to the Upanishads

and Vedantists, 321.

Canis Major and Minor, the Dogs of
Hell, 146.

Carpenter, J. Estlin, 35 n.

Castes, earliest reference to the four,
247.

Causality, belongs to God alone,
54 1 *

Celsus, 372, 375, 409, 452, 455,471.

— Origea’s reply to, 456.

— on the Logos, 43S.

— on Daimones, 471.

Ceremonial, 87.

— in the Veda, 88.

Chariot, myth of, in the Phaedrus,

an.

Charioteer and horses, 21 1.

— in Plato, and in the Upanishads,

211.

Charis, wife of Hephaistos, 76, 80.
Chari tes = Haritas, 76, 1 77 *
Charlemagne, commands theBishops
to preach in the popular lan-
guage, 50 on.

Charles the Bald, 466.

— the Great, 465.

Charlotte Islands, Rev. C. Harrison
on, 222.

Cherubim, Philo on the, 377.

— . Dionysius on the, 475.

Cheyne, Prof., 48.

Chief Cloud or Chief Death, 223, 224,
225.

of Light, 223.

Chiliasts, 453.

China, Sanskrit words in, 368.

INDEX.

558

Chinese prayer, 20.

— inscription on heaven and men,

Christ, as the Logos or Word, xi,
xiii.

— and His brethren, difference in

kind, not degree, xiii*

— religion of, blending the East

and West, 416.

— and His brethren, difference be-

tween, 456.

- divinity of, 457.

— Dionysius 1 view of, 46 8.

— the chief lesson of the life of,

4S9.

. — called the first man, 519.

— His birth in the soul, 520.

— as the Word of the Father,

52°.

difference between, one of kind,

not of degree, 538.

Christian theology as distinct from
Christian religion, xiii.

— and other religions, true object

of comparing, 8.

— advocate, 26,

. — doctrines borrowed from Greece,
59 *

— Register, writer in, on the Infi-

nite, 361 n,

— doctrine, the perfection of Greek

philosophy, 450.

— expression for the re-union of the

soul with God, 535.

— religion, needs no props or scare-

crows, 543.

— Mystics, their resemblance to the

Yedantists and Eleatic philo-
sophers, 483.

and N eo-Platonists on the soul,

4 g 3 -

Tholuck on, 485.

their belief, 486, 487.

do not ignore morality, 486.

Dionysius looked on as their

founder, 488.

Father and Son of the, 512.

Christianity, a synthesis of Aryan
and Semitic thought, ix, 447.

Christianity, faith in, raw d by a
comparative &tudv of relLt-ii?,

24.

— the best of all religions, 26.

— and Islam, real antecedents of,

little known, 27.

— early, its connection with Sutiism,

342.

mention of, in the Ciulshen

Das, 343.

Oriental influences in, 366,

3 6 7 > 36S.

— Sufiism and the Vedanta-philo-

sophy, coincidences between,
366.

— and Buddhism, startling coinci-

dences, 369.

— influenced by the Jewish school

of Alexandria, 371.

— in Alexandria, 434.

— different from that of J udea, 434.

— Theosophy in, 446.

— • must be weighed against other
religions, 447.

— unhistorical, 448.

— truly historical, 448.

— why it triumphed, 454-455.

— built upon the Logos, 521.

— yearning for union with God,

finds its highest expression in,
539 > 542 -
Chrysostom, 434.

Cicero, 112, 509.

Cicero on the Zeus of Xenophanes,
33 i*

Clarke, Lieut. - Cob Y ilberforce,
338 n.

Cleanthes, 460.

Clement of Alexandria, 82, 370,

45 x *

— on Gentiles borrowing from the

Bible, 58, 59.

— did not borrow from the East,

369* , . , .

— did not accept physical impossi-

bilities as miracles, 376.

— on the Logos, 407.

— called Gnostic and Mystic, 445.

— on the soul, 446.

554

INDEX.

Element of Alexandria, denies all
secret doctl'ines in the Church,
482.

Clements, the two, 454.

Clergy in the fifth century, 480,

Coat of Christ, 408, 408 n.

Concepts or ideas, 385.

— learnt by sensuous perception,

3S5.

Conductors, 134.

Confession, Tauler on, 530.
Confucians believe in prayer, 12.
Confucius, on love to our neighbour,
9.

Constantinople, conference of, 463.
Contradictions in Sacred Books,
136.

Cornill, 53.

Corpus, kelirp, 79.

Cosmic vortex, 150.

bow to escape, 150.

Cosmos, God thinking and uttering
the, 382.

Couvade, the, 60, 61.

Cow sacrificed at funeral ceremonies,

I 7°*

Creation or emanation, 296, 514.

— Upanishads on, 297.

— out of nothing, 297.

— like a spider’s web, 297.

— like hairs growing from the skull,

297.

— to the Vedantist, 300.

— problem of, 362.

— through the Logos, 417*

— Eckhart admits two, 515.

Credidi, 79.

Cronius, 144.

Crusaders and the Brig o’ Dread,

175 -

Cusanus, Cardinal, 421 n., 500.

— his Docta Ignorantia, 271.
Cyprian, 434.

Cyrus, 45.

DABU, 21 .

Daehne, 367.

Da§va- worship, abjuration of, 188.
Da§vas, 44.

Dab, the root, 17S.

Dahana, Daphne, 178.

Daimones, 205, 469-471.

— departed souls of good men,

47°.

— Celsus on, 471.

— Plutarch on, 472.

Daityas, 164.

Daphne, Dahand,, 178.

Darai preserved copies of the Avesta
and Zend, 38.

Darius, 69.

— inscriptions of, 45.

Darkness, acts of, 162.

— and poison, personifications of,

186.

Darmesteter, Professor, 40, 41, 44
55, 173

— 011 late use of Avestic, 47.
Darwish, 344, 345.

Dasein and sein, 302.

David of Augsburg, 502.

Dawn, legend of the, 178.

Dead, mourning for, in the Harvey
Islands, 227.

Death, return of soul to God after,
92.

— journey of the soul after, 113-115,

116-117, 143.

passages from the Upanishads,

1x4 et segr.

— rewards and punishments after,

195-

Zarathushtra questions Ahura-

mazda on, 195-199.

— * going into night,’ 228.

De Imitatione, 457.

Deity, in Buddhism no objective,

363-

— • in Judaism, 364.

— in Greece and Borne, 364.

— at Alexandria, biune not triune,

440 -

Demiurge, 440.

Demiurgos, 417.

Demokritus, 82, 84, 377.

Denifld, his article on Eckhart, 509
511, 512 525.

Departed,' abode of the, 140.

INDEX.

535

Departed, raised to the rank of gods,
207.

— Herbert Spencer’s view on this,

207.

Depth or silence, fivQos, 41 1.
Descartes, 102, 512.

Desire, free from, 310.

Deussen, 99, 99 n., no, 1 13 n.,
129 n.j 240 n.

Deva, not deus, 73.

— in the Veda and Avesta, 181.

— bright beings, 181.

— evil spirit in the A vesta, 181.

— modern Persian div, 1S1.
Devaloka, 125, 146,

Devas, 49, 154, 250, 251.

— souls eaten by the, 146, 147, 148.

— gods, became Daevas, evil spirits,

188, 189.

Devayana, path of the gods, 117,
125, 130, 151, 277.

— or Milky Way, 171.

— or rainbow, 171.

Devil of the Old Testament, bel‘ef
in a, 186.

— was it borrowed from the Per-

sians? 186.

Dialogue between Brahman and the
departed, 159.

— on the Self, 250-256.

* deductions from, 260.

Sankara’s remarks on, 261.

— from the AMndogya- Upanishad,

285. " .

Different roads of the soul, 127.
Dillmann, 53.

Dinkar^, the, 38, 40.

— finished by At&rpad, 41 .

— account of the Zoroastrian reli-

gion in, 42.

— when begun and finished, 42.

— translated in Sacred Books, by

West, 42, 47.

Diodorus Siculus and his appeal to
books in Egypt, 82.

Diogenes Laertius, 38.

Dionysius the Areopngite, 164, 165,
297, 430, 461, 462, 499, 505,
5 °* 5 * 4 > 5 i 7 > 534 *

Dionysus, little ordinal in hi»
writings, 463, 46S, 478 ».

— writing of, 463, 467.

— his lift*. 463-464, 467.

— his book a fiction, 4^4.

— a Neo-Plat<u:is’, 404, 467.

— his book accepted a* gvn’u'u? hv

Eastern and Western Ciunvht
465-466.

— identified with St. Dei.:-, 46s.

466. _ ^ "

— translation l)y Seotus Erigt na,

465, 46 6.

— influence of his writings, 4U7.
why so popular. 467, 46 N. 474,

47.8/

— on the Hebrew race, 468.

— on Christ. 46$.

— sources of, 468.

— God as To 6 v. 468.

— love within God, 469.

— hierarchies of ang* N, 469.

— influence of, during the Middle

Ages, 474 479, 482.

— system of, 474.

— his three triads or nine divisions

of angels, 475.

— work of his Trinity, 476.

— belief in angels, chiefly derived

from, 476.

— Militia n on, 476, 477*

— his celestial hierarchy reflected

on earth, 477.

— real attraction of, 478.

— his mystic union, 479, 480,

4S2.

— mysticism of, not orthodox,

484.

— looked on as the founder of the

Christian mystics, 4S8.
Dionysos, worship of, came from
Egypt, 81.

Dirghatamas, 140.

Disraeli, on religion, 336.

Div, Devas, 1S1.

Divine name, meaning in every,
29.

— and human, knowledge of the

unity of, 93.

556

INDEX.

Divine son ship, 94,

lost by sin, 94.

by nescience, 94.

— in man, 2 50-

— spirit of Philo, 41 9.

in the prophets, 420.

— Logos in Christ, 42 1 .

dwelling in us, 425.

— ground of Eckhart, 516, 517.

— - — like the neutral Brahman,

51 . 7 .

is oneness, 520.

the soul founded on, 523.

Divinity of Christ, 457.

Docetae, the, 457.

Docta ignorantia of Cardinal Cusa-
nus, 271.

Doctrines borrowed by the Jews
from the Zoroastrians, 47.

— Professor Clieyne on, 48.

Dogs passed by the departed, 138.
Dominations, 475.

Dominicans, the, 501, 502, 503,

5 ° 4 , 5 ° 5 *

— Eckhart, provincial of, 509.

Sofa, 417 n.

DramicZa or Dravic/a, 100.

Dreams gave the first idea of soul,
259 -

Driver, Dr., 53.

Drummond, Dr. J., 378 n ., 379 n.,
382 n., 402 n., 412 n 413 n.

— on the Logos, 404.

Dualism, not taught by Zoroaster,
180.

— of the Avesta, 185-186.

— replaces the original Monotheism,

186.

— no sign of, in the Veda, 187.
Durgfi, worship of, 376.

EARLY Christian view of the soul,
94 -

language, Greek or J ewish ?

368.

philosophers taunted with bor-
rowing from Greek, 415.

the taunt returned, 415.

Earthly love to the Sufis, 351.

East, Greek philosophy borrowed
from the, 80.

East, not West, the place of the
blessed, 139.

— and West blended in Christianity,

416.

Eastern religions, ignorant commen-
tators on, 180.

Ebionites, 436.

Eckhart, Master, 90, 297, 457,462,
5 ° 6 j 543 -

— suspected of heresy, 506, 508,

509.

— powerful sermons, 506.

— follows St. John, 507.

— appeals to pagan masters, 507,

509 -

— assertion of truth, 507.

— never appeals to miracles, 508.

— appeals to the Fathers, 509.

— his scholastic training, 509 n.

— studied at Paris, 509.

— lived at Bonn, 509.

— his character, 510.

— Schopenhauer on, 511.

— his mysticism, 51 1, 512.

— difficulty of his language, 511.

— Upanishads a good preparation

for, 51 1.

— his definition of the Deity, 51 2-

513 -

— follows Plato and the Stoics, 513.

— uses Alexandrian language, 513.

— called a Pantheist, 514.

— on creation as emanation, 514,

518.

— on the soul, 515, 516.

— his Divine ground, 516, 517.

— how to understand, 517.

— a Neo-Platonist, 518.

— Logos or Word, as the Son of

God, 518.

— Christ the ideal Son of God, 518.

— his view of Christ as the Word,

5 * 9 -

— uses the legendary traditions as

allegories, 520.

— his view of Christ’s birth in the

soul, 520, 524.

INDEX.

55/

Eckhart, Master, relation of the soul
to God, 524.

— like the Vedantists and the Neo-

Platonists, 525.

— passages in the Fourth Gospel

cited by, 525.

— his holy life, 526.

— stillness and silence commended

by, 529.

— discouraged extreme penance,

529-

— led an active life, 529.

— on the true brotherhood of Christ

and man, 536, 537.

Ecstasis of iSt. Bernard, 490.
Ecstatic intuition, 433.

Eden, lady of, 14.

Ego, the, 24S, 249, 304.

— the being behind every, 105.

— what is it, 257, 264.

Egypt, influence of, on Greece, Si-
82.

— famous Greeks who studied in,

82.

— Pythagoras in, 84.

Egyptian prayer, 13.

— religion, works on, 109.

Ehyeh and Jehovah, Heb., 53.
eiBosj or species, 386.

dfc&v 6eov } 415.

Eileithyias, 63 n.

Ekadesa, ekadesin, 12971.

Ekam sat, 237.

Eleatic argument, 323.

— view of the Infinite, 93.

— monism, 93.

— philosophers, 69, 77, 106-107,

27o> 330* 335> 336, 4 6 ^’-

— German Mystics and Vedantists,

280.

— like the earlier TJpanishads, 334.

— metaphysical problems, 335.
’Elisha and Elysion, 63.

Tjkv& } 64.

Elysion, 63, 63 n 64.

Emanation, never condemned, 296.

— upheld by many, 297.

— stages of, 300.

Embryo, whence it comes, 301.

Emerson on Sufi language. 34,0.
EmpeJ.kles 85. J

— and his soul. 433.

Endless lights, 19V

— darkness, 199.

Endymion, 64 n.

Energis.ru, 153.

Enneads of Plato, 165.

Enos, 376.

Eos, dawn, 29.

I.irra, 93.

Epioier, species, 74.

Epictetus quoted, 10.

Epiphanins, 453 n.

Er, story of, 2 1 8.

— before the three Fates, 219.
Eridu, loul of, 14.

Erinys, dawn, 29.

E-Sagil, palace of the gods, 16.
Eschatological legends, general simi-
larities in, 177.

Esoteric doctrine.-*, 327.

a modern invention, 327.

‘Esse est I)eus,’ Eckhart, 512.
Es-Siiat, the bridge of, 173, 539.

reached Mohammed through

the Jews, 200.

Eternal light behind the veil, 319.
Ethical origin of metempsychosis,
*53» I 54*

— character of the Avesta, 190,

199.

— teaching not found in the Upani-

shads, 190, 199.

Ethics, 87.

Euripides on the working of the
gods, 3.

Europe, 64 n.

Eusebius, 83, 450 n .

— mentions Brahmans, 46 «.

Eve, Philo on the creation of, 379.
Evil spirit not found in the early

part of the Avesta, 51.

— problem of the origin of, 184.
Zarathushtra tried to solve it,

184.

— no real good without possible,

185.

— existence of, 307.

558

INDEX.

Evolution in the TJpanishads, 297*

— held by Ramanuja, 298, 317.

FAITH, different degrees of, 493,
494.

Fakirs, 344, 345.

Father, God as the, 41 7 -

— pre-eminence of the, 536.

Father and Son, 512, 536.

the Holy Ghost the bond be-
tween, 513.

simple meaning of, 522.

Fathers, world of the, 1 1 9 ; path of
the, 1 1 7, 148, 169, 170, 277,
3°S.

earliest conception of life after

death, 125.

faith in, given up, 283.

Fathers of the Church, men of Greek
culture, 434.

Ferid eddin Attar, 344.

FeridCtn and the fire-temple of
Baikend, 32.

Few, the, not the many, who influ-
ence nations, 69.

Fick, 64 n.

Fifth century, 478, 500.

— state of the laity, 479-

— Bible, unknown to laity, 479.

— the clergy, 479.

— no true religion, 480.

Fins, borrowed from Scandinavians,

62.

Firdusi, language of, 37.
Fire-worship, not taught by Zoro-
aster, 180.

Fire and sparks, 275.

— air, water, and earth, 287, 287 n.
First person, the Father, 437.

— man, Christ called, 519.
Fitzgerald, 358.

Five elements and five senses, 300.

— stages of mystic union, 480.
Flaccus, Plotinus’ letter to, 430.
Flames burning the wicked, 171,172.
Flaming sword and Reason, 378.
Fleet, 99 n+

Forest, life in the, 326.

— in each man’s heart, 493.

Forgetfulness, desert plain of, 220,
221.

Four states of the soul, 307, 308.

— stages of the Sufi, 348.
Fourteenth century in Germany,

500.

Fourth Gospel, 372, 384, 451, 521,
523 -

— use of Logos in, 404.

— ideal son in, 409.

— use of Monogenes, 411, 413.

— whence the author got the idea

of the Logos, 414.

— in touch with Greek and Judaeo-

Alexandrine ideas, 415.

— Greek thought and words in

first chapter, 415, 416.

— opposed by the Alogoi, 453.

— attributed to Cerinthus, 454.

— passages from, appealed to by

Eckhart, 525.

Franciscans, the, 501, 502, 503, 504,

5 ° 5 *

Fraud among ascetics, 528.
Fravardin Yasht, 205.

Fravashis or Manes, 145.

— or Fravardin, 205, 206.

— wider meaning of, 205.

— the genius of anything, 205.
FrazishtS, 201.

Freemasons, 320.

Friends of God, 503.

Fundamental principle of the histori-
cal school, 2.

Funeral pile, 114.

rising from, 115.

GAH, the five, 43.

Gaimini, 99, 306.

Galton’s combined photographs, 385.
Gandharvas, 163.

Gaotama mentioned in the Fravar-
din Yasht, 46.

Garo-nemana, 203.

Gaster, Dr., 174.

G&tavedas, 192, 193.

Gatha literature, age of, 45.

— belonged to Media, 45.

I Gathas, the, 43, 44, 46.

INDEX.

559

Guthic, the (Nasks), 44.

Gayasiwha, 135.

Genealogical method, vi.

General silence, the, of the Valen-
tinians, 396.

Genii, 205.

Genitive, yevuc-r], 79.

German Mystics, 499, 501, 5 ° 3 , 5 o6 >
539-

1 Eleatic philosophers and Ye-

dantists, 2 So.

their supposed heresies, 503.

— . — their sermons, 506.

— translations of the Bible, 503.

learnt by heart, 504.

Germany, fourteenth century in, 500.

— feeling against Borne in, 503.

— • popular preachers in, 506.

Gerson, 462, 506.

— against divorcing philosophy and

religion, 507.

‘Gervasiua of Tilbury, 218 n.

(Dallas, 163.

TiyvoouKCo, 3 6.

Gill, Rev. W. W., 227.

— on the Harvey Islanders, 227.

no trace of transmigration in

Eastern Pacific, 231.

Giva, living soul, 249.

Givanmukti, life-liberation, 309.
Gladiscb, 85.

Gti a, Sanskrit, 36.

GfuLnak&ttda, 95, 104.

Gnostic belief in the flesh as the
source of evil, 409.^

Gnostics, theosophy or, in the East,

34 2 *

yv&crts, 435- . , _ ,

God, natural religion the foundation
of our belief in, 4.

— special revelation needed for a

belief in, 5.

— and the soul, 90, 91, 92, 362.

— throne of, 141.

— of the Vedantists, 320.

— Mohammed’s idea of, 347.

— and man, how the J ews drew to-

gether the bonds between, 417*

— sufficient for Himself, 417.

God, made man, St. Augustine on,
421.

— vision of, 424.

— and evil, 4S6.

— those who thirst after, 488.

— love of, 4S9, 490.

— and the soul identical, 497.

— in three Persons, 513, 520.

— outside Nature, 513, 515.

— in all things, 513.

— as always speaking or begetting

the Word, 520.

— approach to, 524.

— oneness with, 533.

— want of revei once for, 534.

— many meanings of, 534.

— and man, relation of, 535.
Godhead, struggle for higher con-
ception of the, 237, 244.

— expressed in the Vedas, 237.
in the Upani&hadft, 238,

— predicates of the, 402.

Godly and God-like, 481.

Gods, belief in, almost universal,
59 -

— procession of the, 212.

— residing in animals, 231.

— and men come from the same

source, 364.

— the, St. Clement on, 472.

— St. Augustine on, 472.

— path of the, 115, 117, 118, 121,

148, 159, 169, 277, 308.

faith in, given up, 283.

Good birth, the good attain % 156.

, Thought Paradise, 197.

Word Paradise, 197-

Deed Paradise, 198.

— Plato’s, 393*

. — and evil, distinctions between,

53 2 - „ „

Goodness, acts of, 162.

Gore’s Bampton Lectures, 25 n.
Gospel of St, J ohn, 342.

Gospels, the four, end of second
century, 454,

Gotama, 206.

Grammar, certain processes of, uni-
versal, 59.

560 INDEX.

Greece, our philosophy comes from,
66, 67.

— and India, difference between,

330.

Greek philosophy, its influence on
Christian theology, x.

— prayer, 13.

— works lost, 33.

— and Indian thought, early sepa-

ration of, 65.

— and Homan religions, historical

background for the, 72.

— and Vedic Deities, 74.

— philosophy, a native production,

77, 80-84.

w as it borrowed from the

East? 80.

sources of, 85.

— mysteries, 328.

— and Jewish thought, blending of,

407, 414. . , ,

three points gained by,

421.

— and Jewish converts, 421.

Greeks borrowed names of gods from

Egypt, 58.

— and Brahmans, coincidences be-

tween, 64.

— of Homer’s time, 74.

Gregory the Great, 434, 465.

— of Nys^a, 434, 468.

— of Nazianzen, 434, 468,

Grimm, 73, 174 n.

Gruppe, 88.

Guardian angels, Ahuramazda’s
discourse on, 205-207.

Gubarra, 14.

Guhyakas, 163.

Gulshen Has on Christianity, 343.
Guy on, Mad. de, 462.

HADHA-MATHRIC, the (Nasks),
44 *

Hadhdkht Nask, 43.

on the soul after death, 195.

Hafiz, songs of, 349, 350, 353.
Haidas on the immortality of the
soul, 222, 225.

Haidas, resemblance to Persian
ideas, 222.

H&jlabad, inscriptions of, 37.

Halah and Habon, 48.

Hale, Horatio, 3S3.

Hall, Eitz-Edward, 317 n.
Hamaspathmaeda, 207.

Haoma, 65.

Haritas and Charites, 61, 76.
Harnack, xv, 95 n., 436 n., 438 n
441 n., 442 71., 449 01., 451 n.

— on Origens view of the Third

Person, 452.

Harrison, Rev. C., on the Charlotte
Islands, 222.

Harvey Islanders, Rev. W. W. Gill
on the, 227, 231.

Hassan Basri, 341.

Hatch, Dr., 371 n. t 416 n., 418 n .
Haug, 18 n., 3 7 ok, 42, 44 n., 45, 46,
47,5^55. 181 »•» 184,185* 205,
226?!., 240.

— his wrong translation of Akura’s

name, 55.

Haurvatad, 49, 186.

Heaven in Samoa, 228.

— in Mangaia, 228, 229.

— in Raratonga, 228.

— in Aitutaku, 228.

— in Tahiti, 228.

— in the Society Islands, 228.

— and men united, 365 ru .
Hebrew borrowed little from Baby-
lon or Persia, 368.

— prophets and the Divine Word,

404.

— race, Dionysius on, 468.
Hebrews, Apocryphal Gospel of, 441,
Hegel, 102.

— on Christianity as unhistorical,

44 8 *

Hegelian method misleading, vi.
HeimarmenS, destiny, 390.
Heimdall, the watchman, 169.
Helios, sun, 29.

Hell, not known in the Rig-veda,

166.

— - known in the Atharva-veda,

167.

INDEX.

561

Hell in the Brahmaircas, 167.

Hells, absence of, in the Upanishads,

— the Zoroastrian, 198, 109.

— of Plato, 216.

Henoch, 376.

lienosis or oneness of the individual
with the Supreme Soul, 274,
426, 481, 4S2, 504.

Henotheism of the Veda, 48.
Hephaistos, 80.

Heraclitus, 85, 380, 384, 397, 410,
430.

— his Logos, 389, 390, 391.

— his use of Heimarmend, 390,

— his view of Fire, 390.

— his Logos is rule, 390.

— his Kara Xoy ov, 391.

H erakles, 63, 534.

Heredity, 389.

IJermippos, 38, 39, 45.

— Pliny on, 38.

— his analysis of Zoroaster’s books,

S3-

Herodotos, 45, 81,

Hesiod, 469.

Hesperia, 64.

Hestia, 212,

Hetywanlana, Hell, 224, 225.

4 He who above all gods is the only
God/ 49.

Hierarchies of Proclus and Diony-
sius the Areopagite, 164, 165.
Hierarchy, celestial, of Dionysius,
475 * •

— the earthly, 477.

Hieronymus, 434.

High Priest’s clothes, 408.

Highest Being, 268.

— Self and the individual soul, 273,

2 74> 276, 30S.

— Soul, 274.

— Being and the soul identical, 279.

— Atman, 291.

different stages in the belief

in, 291.

Hilarius, 434.

Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis, 466.
Hillebrandt, 115 n. t 138 n., 147 n.

0 )

Hillel and the Jewish wiki on, o.
Hindu prayer, modern, 21.
Hiranvagarbha, 130, 131.

Historical method, v.

school, fundamental principle of
the, 2. *

— documents for studying the orija

of religion, 27.

— contact between India and Persia

66 .

— school, 522.

History, divine drama of, vi.

of the world, constant ascent in
the, 2.

of religion the true philosophy of
religion, 3.

Holenmerian theory, 2 So.

Holy Ghost, Vohftman a parallel to,
57;

St. Clement’s view, 440, 443
as the Mother of Christ, 441.

special work of, 441, 442,

443 *

at the baptism of Christ, 442

443 *

bond between the Father and

the Son, 513.

Homer, 365 11.

Homoiosis or Henosis, 161, 481.
Homoousioi, 517.
oparos, 361.

Hotar or afcharvan, 65.

Hottentot idea of the moon, 148.
Houris, none among the Jews,
200.

Hugo of St. Victor, 488, 493, 494.

— on knowledge, 493.

— on vision, 497.

— rich in poetical illustration, 497,

49S.

Human and Divine, gulf between,

_ 92.

Human nature twofold, 418.

— becoming divine, 456.

— souls migrating into animal

bodies, 217, 225.

— — moral grounds of this belief.

217, 218,

Humboldt, 73.

562

INDEX.

Humility, St. Bernard^ twelve de-
grees of, 490.

Huxley and the Gergesenes, 25.
Hyios tou theou, x.

Hvle, matter of the Stoics, 397.

— - of Philo, 400.

Hypatia, 373, 429.

Hypostaseis, Father and Son as, 442.

I AM that I Am, 49, 52. .

found in the Elohistic section,

53.

never alluded to again in Old

Testament, 53.

interpolated from a Zoroas-

trian source, 53, 55.

what I Am, 55.

what thou art, 278.

He, Jellal eddln on, 363.

Iceland and Norway, 62.

1 deal man, the, 440.

Idealistic philosophy, 292.

Ideas, eternal, 104.

— of Plato, 205, 387, 3S9, 39 2 > 4 6 9>

518.

our heredity, 389.-

our species, 392.

are the changeless world, 5 1 8.

— protested against by the Stoics,

518.

taken up by the Neo-Platon-

ists, 518.

— of Philo, 401.

Ignatius, 454.

Ignorant commentators on Eastern
religions, 180.

Illusion, theory of, held by Sankara,
317-

Ilya, the tree, 1 21, 122.

Images, ancient sages think in, 141.

Immortality of the soul, 158.

never doubted in the Upani-

shads, 210.

among the Haidas, 222.

Polynesians on, 226.

among the Jews, 233.

the Buddhists, 233.

— belief in, very general, 231.

— Vedanta doctrine on. 234.

Immortality, need not be asserted,
424-

Incarnation and the Logos, xii.

— the, 439.

. — reticence of St. Clement on,
444-

India, fragmentary character of the
Sacred Books of, 33.

— and Persia, relation between the

religions of, 65, 179.

— rich philosophical literature in,

66.

— influence of religion and philo-

sophy in, 68.

— conquest of, a sad story, 70.

— dreamers of, 71.

— and Greece, difference between,

33°-

— St. Matthew’s Gospel in, 436.
Indian and Persian thought long

connected, 65.

— and Greek thought, early separa-

tion of, 65.

— philosophy, independent charac-

ter of, 66, 67, 79-

a native production, 77, 80,

85, 86.

peculiar character of, 101.

— view of life, 68.

— Aryas, 67.

their language ours, 71.

— philosopher in Athens, 83.

sees Sokrates, 84.

— Greek, Homan religions full

of common Aryan ideas, 85,

86.

— and Greek thought, parallelism

between, 212, 213.

— music, 282.

— Pandits, 369.

— ascetics, 528.

Individual soul, true nature of,
269.

an d the Highest Self, 273,

274> 275 , 279*

and Brahman, 275.

different from the Highest

Self, 276.

Ramanuja’s teaching, 315.

index. 5C3

Individual soul, Sankara’s teaching,
316.

Indra, 50, 121, 122, 130, 133, 1S6,
235, 246, 250, 251, 253, 260.

— as demon, 182.

— ■ Supreme God, 259.

— as Andra in the Avesta, 182.
Indriyas, 305.

Infinite, perception of, shared by all
religions, vii,

— Eleatic view of the, 93.

— in nature, 89, 105, 535.

— in man, 89, 105, 535.

— one, 311, 534*

— writer in the Christian 'Register

on the, 361 n.

— of Anaximander, 400.

— how can we know the? 432.

— perception of the, 480.

‘In Him we live and move,’ &c.,

* 94 -

Innocent II, 492.

Inspiration or S'ruti, 102.

— the idea of, 103.

— literal, 543.

Intellect, language the outer form
of the, 61.

Interdict of fourteenth century, 500,
5 01 -

Interpretation, difficulties of, 123.
Invisible things, reality of, 154.
Ipse, 249.

Irenaeus, 434.

Isaac, 376.

Isis, veiled, 327..

‘Islam, no monachism in,’ 338.
Islam, will of Allah, 347.

Isocrates, 84,

Isvara, the Lord, 295, 306,316, 320,
324.

— is Brahman, 312, 3x6.

Italian and Latin, 72.

Izads, the thirty, 43.

Izesban, sacrifices, 240.

Izz eddln Mutaddesi, 344.

JACOB’S dream, Philo on, 414.
JacolHot, 81.

Jamblichus, 446.

J ami’s Salfiman and Abs&d, extract
from, 35S.

Jasher, book of, 34.

Jayadeva, 354.

Jehovah, 51, 52, 40S, 414, 447.

— Psalmist’s words on, 50.

— and ehyeh, Heb., 53/

— of Philo, 400.

Jellal eddln Bhmi, 344, 345.

on the true Sufis, 346.

extracts from his Mesne vi,

355 *

on the Sun as image of Deity,

35 6 *

on the soul, 357.

on self-deceit, 357,

on ‘I am He,’ 363.

Jesus of Nazareth, influence of IDs
personality, xiii, xiv.

as perfect, 439.

as the ideal man, 440.

Jewish religion, God far removed
from man, ix.

— influence on the Zoroastrians, 48.

— doctors at the Sassanian cotir,,

173 n.

Jews, influence of Persian ideas on,
200.

— did not believe in Houris, 200,

— effect of the dispersion of, 374,

— and Christians ashamed of their

Bible, 375.

— borrowed very few religious terms

from the East, 368.

— enlightened, honoured at Alex-

andria, 408.

Jones, SirW., on Sufiism, 339, 333*

— translations of Sufi poets, 354

et seq.

J owett, 393 n., 394 n.

Judaism and Buddhism, 233*

Deity in, 364.

Jugglers, Indian, 303.

Julian, the Emperor, 429.

Junaid, 344.

Jupiter, Aristides on, II.

— limited, 235.

— as Son of God or Logos, 422,

423.

564

INDEX,

Jupiter, Plotinus on, 422.

Justin Martyr against anthropomor-
phic expressions, 572, 454.

KAABA, the, 340,

Kaegi, i 39 w -
Kakikat, 348-
Xakshushi, 12 1, 1 24.

Kalpa, 315.

— to kalpa, 295.

JTandala, 156.

Kant, on knowledge, 321.

— anticipated by the Vedantists,

321-322.

Kant’s philosophy, 3.

— Critique of Pure Reason , 5.

K arawas, 163.

Kaimakawfa, 95 » I0 4 -
Karman or Apdrva, 306, 307.
Kathari, 504.

— became ketzer, 504.

Kadapcns, 481, 4^ 2 •

Kaupat, name for the Milky way,
170.

Kanshitaka, 130,

Kausbitaki-Dpanishad, 120, 159

27S. . .

Kaye, meaning of spirit, 4O1 n.
Kepler, 384.

Ketzer, 504. ,

A'Aandogya-XJpanishad, 1 1 S, 119,

120, 125, 132.

dialogue on the unseen in man,

135.

— dialogue from, on the Self, 2 50—2 56 .
u ot belonging to the earliest Y euic

literature, 259.

— not later than Plato, 259.

— deductions from, 259, 260,

— dialogue from, 285-290.
Kliosroes, 41.

iTindvar bridge, 202.

Xinvatf bridge, 194.

— or judgment bridge, 194.

. identified with the Atman, Self,

in the Upanishads, 195.

— how made, 195*

— in Persia, 168, 172*

Xinva t bridge, crossing from earth
to heaven, 539.

Kirjath-sepher, city of letters, 32.

Kit perceiving, 94.

— Brahman as, 293.

— meaning of, 293, 294.

— and aMfc, 315.

Kitra, 120.

Kittel, 53.

Klamaths, the Logos among the,
xi, 383.

— their idea of creation, 383, 389.
Klemm, 75.

Knowledge, Greek love of, 85.

depends on two authorities, 102.

— blessedness acquired by, 148-

151.

no return for those souls who

have true, 149.

— true, 160, 16 1.

or faith better than good works-

in the Upanishads, 190.

better than good deeds, 204.

— not love of God, 291.

— absence of, an objective power to

the Hindu, 320.

— six requirements for attaining,326.

— three instruments of, 41 9.

— three degrees of, 431.

— more certain than faith, 493*
Kohut, Dr., 187, 200, 201.

Konrad of Marburg, 504.

K oOfJLOS VOTjTQS, 407, 513.

— iSewy, 402.

Kramamukti, 308.

Krantor, quoted by Proclus, 82.
Krishwagupta, 135.

Kronos, 64 n.

K shathravairya, 186.

Kshatriyas, 1 56.

Kuenen, 9 n., 28 n., £ 3 , 4 6 5 *
Kuhn, 73, 17 1 -

LACTANTIUS, 535 -
Laity in the fifth century, 479.
Language, the outward form of the
intellect, 61. .

common background of philo-
sophy, 71.

INDEX.

56.5

Language, help derived by philo-
sophy from, 77.

— eternal, 103.

Lassen, 46 n.

Law, the (Nashs), 44.

Laws of Manu, or of the Mfmavas,
i6r.

Lectures, plan of these, 541.
Legenda Aurea, bridge in the, 175.
Legendary traditions of Christ re-
jected by the Greeks, 519.

— used as allegories by Eckhart,

520.

Lethe, the river, 221.

Leverrier, 86.

Lewy, Dr. EL, on deriving Greek
from Hebrew, 63, 63 n.
Liebrecht, notes to Ger vasius, 175 n. }
218 n.

Life, Indian view of, 68, 69.

— modem view of, 68.

5/ight, deities representing, 134,

* 55 '

Lightning and the moon, 115 n.
Literary documents, 30.

Literature, written, a modern inven-
tion, 30.

L^cke, 102.

Logau, quotation from, 3.

Logoi, 406, 412, 457, 469.

— of the Stoics, 397, 398, 473.

— are the angels of Philo, 401, 413,

473;

— conceived as one, 473.

as many, 473.

— spoken of as Aeons by the Gnos-

tics, 473.

Logos, 342, 373, 376, 378, 380-381,
4”; 447. 45°. 513. 518.

— doctrine of, exclusively Aryan, x.

— and the Incarnation, xii.

— the Zoroastrian, parallel to, 57.

— meaning of, 38Q.

— faint antecedents of, in Old

Testament, 381.

— of Philo, purely Greek, 381.

— history of, 381-384.

— among the Klamatbs, 383.

— * thinking and willing, ’'383.

i Logos, historical antecedents of the

[ 3S4.

— word and thought, 3S5.

— of God, 387.

— of Heraclitus 3S9.

— connecting the hr* t Cause and the

phenomenal world, 391.

— and Nous, 391.

the, as a bridge between God and
the world, 401, 41 4.

— a predicate of the G* dhead, 4c 2.
as the Son of God, 403.

— of Greek extraction, 403.

— only begotten or unique son.

. 4°4*

— m Fourth Gospel, 404.
theological use of, from Palestine,

404.

— roots of, 405.

stronger thau the Sophia, 407.

— as the high priest, 407.
known to the Jews of Christ’s

time, 40S.

— the idea of all ideas, 412.

— recognised by Philo in the patri-

archs, 413.

— realised in the noumenal and phe-

nomenal worlds, 413.

— and Logos Monogenes historical

facts, 415.

— and the powers, 417.

— used for creation, 417.

— becoming man, 421.

— Athanasius on, 421.

— historical interpretation, 422.

— of St. Clement, 437.

— of Athenagoras, 437.

— head of the logoi, 437.

— identifier! with Jesus, 438.

— manifested in man from the begin-

439, 457*

— and the pneurna, 444.

— of Origen, 450, 451.

— as Kedeemer, 452.

— alethes of CeLus, 452.

— doctrine of, identified with St.

John, 454.

— intervening between the Divine

Essence and matter, 455,

566

INDEX.

Logos, a connecting link, not a divid-
ing screen, 455.

— later a wall of partition, 456.

— in the Latin Church, 458-

460.

— no Latin word with the full mean-

ing of, 459-461.

— Zeno’s definition, 460.

— development in East and West,

454-461.

— the bond between the human

soul and God, 455*

— recognised in Christ, 455.

— view of the early Apologetes,

455 *

— the incarnation

of thought,

— re-established by the Neo-Pla-

tonists, 521.

— Christianity built upon, 521.

— history of, traced back, 523.

— Monogenes, 523.

— prophorikds and endi<£thetos,

242.

(TITip/J-CLTUcSSj 384.

Loka, 133 , *35 . „

Longfellow’s translation from Logau,

3 *

Lord’s Supper, 482.

Lorinser, 85.

Lost books, 33.

Lotze, xv.

Louis I, 465.

Love, child of poverty and plenty,
432.

— earthly, as a type of love to God,

35 L 35 2 *

— of God, 445, 489, 490, 505. ^
wanting in the Yedanta-

sfitras, 291.

four stages of, 490.

Lower Brahman, return of the soul
to, 1 14.

Lucretius, xi.

Ludwig, 121 w.

Luther, 510.

— on the Theologia Germanica,

51a

Lykurgus, travels of, 83,

M AC ABIU S, and the my steries,48 2 .
Macrobius, 145.

Maghavat, 253, 255.

Magi came from Media, 44, 44 n.
Mahabharata, quoted, on love to
others, 9.

— Setus or bridges of the, 167.
Mahltmas, 327.

Maiden, good works as a beautiful,
199, 202, 209.

— influence of this idea on Moham-

medanism, 199.

Makhir, god of dreams, 16.

Mallas, 163.

Man, to think, 79, 98.

Man, infinite in, 105.

— essence of, 304.

— Philo’s view of, 409.

— a manifestation of the Logos, 439.
Manas, mind, 79, 249, 305.
ManasaA, or amanavaA, 115 n., 134.
Manasl, the beloved, 12 1, 124. r
Mangaian heaven, 228, 229.
Manhood, perfect, as realised in the

ideal son, 409.

Mani, 40, 41.

Manichaeism, 40, 41, 370.
Mantras, independent statements in
the, 137.

not in harmony with the Upa*

nishads, 137.

Manu, laws of, transmigration in the,

161.

— age of these laws, 16 1.

— minute details of transmigration,

162.

— nine classes of transmigration,

163.

— punishments of the wicked, 165.

— nine classes of, 2 1 5.

Marcus Aurelius quoted, 10.
Marut, Mars, stormwind, 29.
Matamvan, 234.

Matd, Matu, 14.

Matter, created by God, 455.
Mavra, or Mavriza, the Milky Way,
170.

Maximius on the writings of Diony-
sius the Areopagite, 463.

INDEX.

587

Maximus Tyrius, 470.

— on Daimones, 470.

Maya or Nescience, 303, 316, 31S-
321.

Mazda, 18, 19, 172.

Mazdaism, 41.

Media, birthplace of Zoroaster’s re-
ligion, 44 n.

Melikertes, 63.

Melissus, 330.
fj.€fiova, memini, 79.

Memory, powers of, 31.

Men clogged by the body, 475.
fiivos, 79.

1 Mere man/ 536.

Merodach, 14, 16.

Mesnevi, the, 346, 354.

— second only to the Koran, 347.

— extract from, 355.

Messiah, the, 408, 408 n .

— recognised in Jesus, 438.
and the Logos, 519.

both realised in Christ, 5 1 9.

Metempsychosis, 81, 82, 151.

— belief in, 77, 152.

— not connected with Animism,

153 .

— of ethical. origin, 153, 154, 156.

— belief in, in Plato and the CJpani-

skads, 2 1 4-2 1 5.

Michael, the Stammerer, 465.
Migne’s edition of Dionysius the
Areopagite, 467.

Migration of souls, 335.

Milky Way, 145, 170, 177.

and Pythagoras, 145.

Oiion and Canis, 146.

names for, 170.

Mills, 18 n.

* Mills of God,’ 3.

Milman on the intermediate agency
between God and creation, 401.

— on Dionysius, 476.
Mimams&-sfttras, 98.

— Pftrva and Uttara, 98, 99.

Mind, the breath of God, 419, 420.
Minokhired, weighing of the dead

in, 201*

Minos, 64 n.

Minucius Felix, 372.

Mira, not miracula, 25.

Miracles, 24, 25.

— physical, 543*

Miru, or Muru, mistress of the
netherworld, 229, 230
Mithra, Vedic Mitra, 182, 194’ 202,
206.

Mitra, 182.

Modern date of Sacred Jkioks, 30.
Mohammedan prayer, 21.

— conquest of Persia, 41.

— poetry, half-erotic, half-mystic,

35 °*

Mohammed’s idea of God, 347.
Moira, 389.

Molinos, 46 2.

Money, Pliienician and Egyptian
love of, 85.

Monism in India and Greece, 270.

— of Origen, 450.

Monogenes, x, 366, 410.

— of Plato, 394.

— the only-begotten, 409.

— in Parmenides, 410.

— Supreme Being, 410.

— in the Timaeus, 410.

— as used by Valentinus, 411.

— applied to the visible word, 411

— used in Old Testament, 41 1.

— in Book of Wisdom, 41 1.
Monotheism of the Avesfca, 48.

— the original, of the Zoroastrians

replaced by Dualism, 186.

— no trace of this in the Veda,

187.

Montanists, 453.

Moon questions the soul, 120, 121*

— soul in the, 146, 147, 150.

— source of life, 147, 148, 149.

— waxing and waning of, 147, 148.

— among Hottentots, 148.

— souls leaving, 158.

More’s, Henry, verses on the soul,
276.

— and the Holenmerian theory, 280*

— quoted, 324, 541.

— on the Theologia Oermanica 3

5ii.

568

INDEX.

Moses and tlie Shepherd, 23.

— Jews at the time of, 70.

— use of name as author, 365 n .
Mother-of-pearl and silver, 298.

— or nurse of all things, 402.
Mntyu, 79.

fxvrjats, 481.

Muir, Dr., derivation of brahman,
241.

Mukhyaprawa, 305.

Muller, Friedrich, 37 n.
Muwdaka-Upanishad, 1 20.

— soul after death in, 124.

Muspel, sons of, 169.

P-vcttcu or <£amf6^€V0t, 481.

Mysteries among the Neo-Platon-

ists, 428, 429.

— and magic, 429.

— meaning nothing mysterious, 481.

— denied by Clement, 482.

— Macarius on, 482.

— of Dionysius, 482.

Mystic Christianity, 462, 499, 505.

— likeness to Ved&ntism, 526.

— oneness with God, 533.

— philosophy, 284.

— religion, 91.

— objections to ? 526.

excessive asceticism, 526.

— theology, 482, 483.

— Tholuck’s definition of a, 484-

485. •

— objections to, 487.

— union, 479.

five stages of, 480.

— taught by the Neo-Platonists,

480.

Mystical theology of the Sufis and
Yogis, 353.

Mysticism and Christian mysticism,
484.

— of Eckhart, 511.

Mystics, German, 297.

Mythological studies, Aryan founda-
tion of, 74*

. — language misunderstood, 141.

NAiTIKETAS, 223.

NS-nian, name, 79.

Namarftpa, 2 86.

Naorchaithya, 186.

Naraka, hell, 167.

Narasawsa, Nairyasaraha, 182.
Nasatyau, 182 n.

Nasks, the, 41-46.

— collected in eighth and end of

ninth centuries, 41, 42.

— three only complete, 42.

— imperfect in the time ofVologesis

39 - .

— division in the very early, 42,

— those now held sacred, 43.

— three classes of, 44.

Nafas, 163.

Nature, infinite in, 105.

Natural religion, vii, 88, 89,496, 539.

— the foundation of our belief in

God, 4.

— St. Paul’s regard for, 536.
Natural revelation, 7.

traced in the V eda, 8. r

Neander, xv.

Nehemiah Nilakan< 7 ia Gore, 317 w.
Neo-Platonism, spread of, in the
East, 342, 359.

— in its pagan form in Proclus,

462.

Neo-Platonists, 372, 380.

— and the wisdom of the East, 82.

— and their trust in sentiment and

ecstasy, 425-427.

— and Stoics, 425-42 7.

— their visions, 426.

— belief in a Primal Being, 427.

— soul as image of the eternal Nous,

427,

— mystery among, 428.

— claimed revelation, 428.

— universal religion, 428.

— their mischievous influence, 429.
Nescience, 268, 272, 274, 284,310,

3 2 D 525* J ,

— divides the individual and the

supreme soul, 272.

— or Avidy&, the cause of pheno-

menal semblance, 273.

— can be removed by $ruti only,

293.

INDEX,

56 D

Nestorius, 443.

Newman, his definition of real reli-
gion, 90, 336.

New Testament, reference to lost
books, 34, 35.

— language easy, 1 79.

Nibelunge, German of the, 511.
Nicaea, council of, 373, 374, 462.
Nicholas I, Pope, 466.

Niedner, xv.

Nine classes of transmigration, 163.

of Manu, 163, 164, 215, 221.

of Plato, 164, 214, 221.

Niobe, 64 «.

Nirukta, 172,

Nirvana, 308.

— of the Vedantist, 309, 310.
Nizistd, 201.

Noah, 376.

North- American Indians, their belief
in a bridge between this world
1 and the next, 16S.

Noumenal world, 270.

— how did it become phenomenal,

270.

— Indian "Vedantist view, 271.
Nous, or mind, 389, 411, 420.

— of Anaxagoras, 391.

— axprjfca, 39 1.

— the eternal, 427.

Number, conception of universal,

XT 59 ‘.

Numenius, pupil of Philo, 144, 425,

425 «.

— trinity of, 440.

Numerals, some savages with none
beyond four, 380.

— borrowed from their neighbours,

380.

Nyayish, the five, 43.

*OAE, 248.

Odysseus, 220.
oc 8 a , 79.

6 Old One on High,’ 387.

Old Testament, writing mentioned
in, 32.

reference to lost books in, 34.

names allegorised by Philo, 376.

Old Testament, faint antecedents of
the Logos ii:, 381.
teaching on the son 1, 418. 4:0.
leaves a gulf between God and

man, 467.

and New Testament, language
adopted in translating e-rta'n
passages of ike ISucn vf
the hast, 37.

Olen, 64 n.

Qm, xi 8.

Omar ibn el Faridh, 344,
ov of Parmenides, 334.

One Doing, the, ‘and the human
soul, 4S3.

Oneness of God and the soul, viii,
53°? 534.

— of God, in the Avesta and Old

Testament, 4S.

— of the human and divine natures,

443-

— of the objective and subjective

Deity, 447.

— how it can be restored, 530.

Only begotten *Son, 413.

— a Greek thought and used as

such, 413.

Oppert, 35 n.

Oriental and Occidental philosophy,
striking coincidences between.
So*

— such coincidences welcome, 86,

— influences on earlv ChrLsiianitv,

366.

idea now given up, 367.

Origen, xiii, 372, 384, 424,446, 448,
454? 458, 4^3-

— did not accept physical impossi-

bilities as miracles, 376.

— his dependence on the Scriptures,

449.

— on religion forth© many, 449, 453.

— his view of miracles, 450.

— great object of his teaching, 450.

— Christian doctrine, the perfection

of Greek philosophy, 450,

— Monism of, 450.

— on the Logos. 450.

— Divinity of Christ, 451.

570

INDEX.

Origen, angels or rational beings of,
'451,469-471.

— on the Third Person, 452.

— accepted the Trinity, 452.

— on souls as fallen, 452.

— his honesty, 457, 458.

— angels, &c., of, 473.

— denounced in the Middle Ages,

488.

— on doctrines for the few, 481.
Origin of species, 3S6, 518.

— Plato’s ideas, 386.

Orion, 64 n.

— Milky Way and Oanis, 146.
Orinazd, 36, 181.

— Yasht, 54.

an enumeration of the names

of Ahura, 54.

— and Drukh, 183.

— council of, 186.

— angels, qualities of, 185.
Oromasos, 45.

Orphics, the, 85.

Orthodox, 422.

Ouranos, 410.

«Our Father,’ Christ never speaks
of, 538.

Ousia, 513, 517.

— Father and Son sharing the same,

442.

— and hypostasis, difference be-

tween, 459.
oixjta , 78.

ovcria d\ev(JL€prjs, 280.

PADA, 98.

Pahlav, parthav, 36, 37.
Paw/saratrikas, 276.

Pantaenus, xiii, 436, 451.

— found St. Matthew’s Gospel in

India, 436.

Pantheism, 270, 514, 515.

— and St. Paul, 94.

Pantheistic heresies of fourteenth

century, 503.

Papal infallibility, 543.

Papias, xiv.
urn paSeiy £ca, 415.

Paradise, 203.

Paradises of Good-Thought, Good-
Word, and Good-Deed, 1 97,198.
ParuA paravata/^, 116, 116 n.
TrapaK\r)TOS , 416.

Param andAparam Brahman, 316.
Paramatman, the Highest Self, 314.
Pariwama, 298.

Parinama-vada, 317? 318.
Parliament in Japan, 381.
Parmenides, 330, 333, 410.

— like the later Upanisbads, 333.

— his idea of the One Beiug, 333,

334 *

— darkness and light, 334.

— and the migration of souls, 335.
Parsis, revelation or holy question,

— and the summer solstice, 145.
Partisans, 37.

— not Zcroastrians, 40.

Path of the Gods, 115, 117, 11S, 121,
125, 14S, 159, 169, 170, 277,
308.

Fathers, 117, 125, 148, 169,

277, 308.

— faith in, given up, 283.

Path&ka, Mr., 99 n.

Paul and Barnabas quoted, 6.
Pazend, 37.

Peer, simile of the, 299.

Pehlevi, or Pahlavi, 36.

— first traces of, 37*

— coins, 46,

— literature, beginning of, 46.
Pelasgians borrowed the names of

their gods from Egypt, 81.
Penance, 530.

— shows earnestness, 531.

People, the, and the priesthood, 501-

506.

Persepolis, palace of, burnt by Alex-
ander, 39.

Persia, loss of the sacred literature

of, 35.

* sacred books of, known to Greeks

and Romans, 38.

destroyed by Alexander, 38.

collected under Yistasp, 38.

preserved by Darai, 3S.

INDEX. 571

Persia, Mohammedan conquest of, 41.
Persian and Indian thought long
connected, 65.

— influence on Sufiism, 342.

— mobeds, 369.

4 Person, not a man,’ 1 15, 115 n .,
I 34> I 35*

— follows after the lightning, 135,

*3 6 *

Personal gods of the ancients, 235.
Personality of Jesus, influence of
the, xiv.

— of the soul, 310.

— a limitation of the Godhead, 235,

236-

Personification, 153.

Pfeiffer, edition of Eckhart, 507.
Phaedrus, my th of the chariot, 211-
214.

Phenicians and Greeks, 62, 63.
Phenomenal and real, 269.

% — and noumenal world, 270.

— world, /Sankara’s, 3 T9.

Philo, xii, 145 n., 3 66, 368, 370,

3 7D 374? 375 37^, 3*4*

# 4°2 n. } 450, . 463.

— influence of his works, xv, xvi.

— did not borrowfrom the East, 368.

— his allegorical interpretations,

37°» 376, 377*

— not a Father of the Church, 371.

— a firm believer in Old Testament,

375*

— his touchstone of truth, 375.

— did not accept physic. il impossi-

bilities as miracles, 376.

— on the Cherubim, 377.

— on the creation of Eve, 379.

— his language and concepts Greek,

380.

— on the Logos, 382.

— his inheritance, 399.

— his life, 400.

— his philosophy, 400.

— his J ehovah, 400.

— his Hyle, 400.

— ideas of, 401.

— welcomes the theory of the Logos,

401,

Philo, mythological phraseology of,
403,412,413.

— steeped in Jewish thought, 404.

— did not identify the Logos with

the Messiah, 40S n.

— his distinct teaching about the

Logos, 409.

— his view of man, 409.

— use of Monogenes, 41 1, 412.

— recognises the Logos in the

patriarchs, 413, 439.

— on Jacob’s dream, 4 14.

— his knowledge of various tech-

nical terms, 416.

— indistinct on the soul and God,

418.

— his psychology, 418, 419, 420.

— on the senses, 4 19.

— his use of nous, 420.

— his bridge from earth to heaven,

424*

— eschatological language of, 425.

— his stoicism, 426.

— allegorised, the, Old Testament,

429,

— the Logos as intervening between

the Divine and matter, 455.

— treatise, l)e Vita Contemplalim,

ascribed to, 464. ,

Philosophy of religion, 3.

— Indian, 66-68.

— language the common back-

ground of, 71, 77.

— later growth of, 77.

— begins with doubting the evi-

dence of the senses, 102.

— and religion, 294, 446, 455.

— of Philo, 370.

— of Clement, 370.

(purs, 416 «.
qcoTiatios, 481.

Photius, 464.

Phraortes, from Greek Pravarti,
205.

Physical impossibilities not accepted
as miracles by Philo, Clement,
or Origen, 376.

— religion, 89, 90, 106, 160,

541 -

572

INDEX,

Physical Religion, importance of the
Veda for, 95.

last results of, 232.

— science, wild dreams of, 388.

— teaching of Xenophanes, 332,

333*

Pindar, 210.

Pha&as, 163.

Pitaras, not in Avesta, 205.

— the Vedic, 207.

— the Fathers in the Veda, Fra-

vashis in the Avesta, 204.
Pirn's, 121 n.

— and the summer solstice, 145.

— or Fathers, 190, 19 1.

— as conceived in the Vedic Hymns,

191.

— invoked in the Vedic Hymns,

191.

Pitny&rca, the Path of the Fathers,
117, 130, 148.

— belief in, the earliest period, 1 50.
Plato, 85, 102, 144, 244, 28711,, 299,

318. 373. 375. 380, 384. 4°°)
426. 43°, 5«-

— uses Oromasos for Ahuramazda,

45*

— the philosopher from the He-

brews, 82. .

— in Egypt, 82, 84.

— and Aristotle knew Zoroaster’s

name, 83.

* — in the East, 84.

— nine classes of rebirths, 164, 21 5.

— ideas, 104, 105, 205, 3S7, 389, 392,

469, 510.

— and the Upanishads and Avesta,

similarities between, 208, 209,

213*

— his mythological language, 209.

— asserts the immortality of the

soul, 210.

— length of periods of metempsy-

chosis, 216.

— the philosophers of India, coinci-

dences between, 217, 220.

— stronger differences, 220.

— first idea > of metempsychosis

purely ethical, 218.

Plato, on Xenophanes’ tenets, 331.

— Philonizes, or Philo Platonizes,

37i*

— Justin Martyr on, 373.

— his ideas on the origin of specie^,

386 j 39 2 -

— his one pattern of the world,

393*

— highest idea of the good, 393,

394*

— his Cosmos, 394.

— soul divine, 395.

— called the Attic Moses, 415.

— his Trinity, 440.

— on the body as opposed to the

soul, 527.

— der grdze Pfaffe, 509.

Platonists at Cambridge, 323.

— their likeness to the Upanishads

and Vedantists, 32 X.

Plato’s authority, 208.

Play on words, 27S.

Pliny on Hermippos, 38, 83.
Plotinus, teaching of, on the soul,
280.

— on Jupiter, 422.

— follower of Philo, 424.

— on absorption in the absolute,

, 4 2 7* .

— his attention to Eastern religions,

428.

— and the Christian religion, 429.

— his letter to Flaceus, 430.

— and the ecstatic state, 433,

445*

— on his soul, 433.

Plutarch, 38, 83, 470.

— on Daimones, 471, 472.

Po, night, 228.

Poetical language of Sufiism, 349.
Poetry of the Mohammedans, half-
erotic, half-mystic, 350.
Polycarp, 454.

Polynesian converts, language of,

367-

Polynesians on the immortality of
the soul, 226-231.

Popular preachers in Germany, -
506.

INDEX,

573

Popular religion for the unlearned,
522.

Porphyrius, 144-145 n. 9 425 n. } 429,
433*

— on the tropics, 144.

— on Origen, 450.

Potter’s wheel, simile of, applied to
the free sou), 309.

Powers, 475.

Practical, religion for the many,
449.

Prapapati, 96, 121, 122, 130, 133,
241, 247, 250, 251, 272.

— his first lesson on {Self, the reflec-

tion, 252, 262.

— his second lesson, dreams, 254,

263.

— his third lesson, dreamless sleep,

255/263.

— his last lesson, the true Self, 2 56,

« 264.

— on the Highest Self, 267.

— a later deity, 259.

— his teaching to Indra, 261.
Pra^fl^, knowledge, 123, 124.
Pramadadasa Mitra and the simile

of the peer, 299.

PramHwas, two, 102.

Prawa, breath, for the godhead,
237*

— spirit, 245, 247, 248,

Pratika, 295.

Pratyaksha, sensuous perception,
102, 293.

Pravartin, Sk., 205.

Prayer, as petition, unknown to the
Buddhists, 12.

— known to the Confucians, 12.

— Greek, 13.

— Egyptian, 13.

— * Aeeadian, 14.

— Babylonian, 15,

— Vedic, 16, 17,

— Avestic, 18.

— Zoroastrian, 19.

— Chinese, 20,

— Mohammedan, 21.

— Modem Hindu, 21.

Prayers, ancient, 12.

| Predicates of the Godhead, 402,
Prepositions, 78.

Primal cause, 3SS.

Prime mover of Aristotle, 395.
Principalities, 475.

Proclus, hierarchies of, 164, 165.

— on the Mystse, 4 28.

— • his connection with the mediaeval
mystics, 429, 430.

— and Neo-Platonism, 462.

— or Proculus, studied by Eckhart,

509 -

Prophets and the Divine Spirit, 420,
Trp&Toyovos, 4 1 5.

Prototokos, x.

Psalmist’s view of Jehovah, 50.

237.

Psychic, 91.

Psychological Mythology, 75.

— Religion, 91.

— meaning of, 91.

importance of the Vedanta for,

95*

the gist of, 106.

— Religion or Theosophy, 541,
Pulotu, or Purotu, the Samoan

heaven, 228.

Punishment of the wicked in the
Avesta, 203.

— 1 — little about, in the TJpani-
shads, 203.

Purgatory among the Jews, 200.

— called Hamistakan in the Avesta,

226,

Purusha, 244, 246, 247, 252.
Purusho manasaA, 115 11 6 n,

Pftrya Mlmamsa, 98, 99, 306.

ascribed to Badarayaraa, 99,

101.

Phrvapakshin, 265,

Pftshan, 138.

Pythagoras and his studies in Egypt,
82, 84.

— whence his belief in metempsy-

chosis, 85, 152.

— and the Milky Way, 145.
Pythagoreans, 77.

— schools of the, 328,

— different classes, 328.

INDEX.

574

QUIETISM, 493.

RA, the sun-god, 227, 229.

Rabia, the earliest Sufi, 34 °- 34 1 >
343.

Rabbis, their teaching on man’s
good and evil works, 200.

— on Paradise, and twelve

months’ purgatory, 200.

— in advance of the Old

Testament, 201.

Radamanthys, 64 n.

Ra^amya, warrior-caste, 247*

Rami, 120.

Rainbow, 169, 17°? * 77 *

— same as the Devayana, 171*

— five colours of, 171.

Rain and seed as illustration of
God’s work, 307.

Rakshasas, 163.

E&m&nu^a, 273? 3 i 3 j 3 t 5 >

— commentary by, 100, 10 1, 107,

108, 113.

— holds the theory of evolution,

108, 298, 317.

— Brahman of, 108.

— represents an earlier period of

Upanishad-doctrine, 1 1 3 .

— on the soul after death, 114.

— and Sankara, their differences,

314 - 31 ?; . . ,

— his teaching about Brahman,

3 X 5 . 317 * , .

and about the individual soul,

315 .

Ramatirtha, ill.

Rammohun Roy, his faith, 375*
Raratongan heaven, 228, 229.
Rashnft, 202, 206.

— weighs the dead, 202.

Reality, two kinds of, to the Vedan-

tist, 320.

Reason, xi, 378, 447.

— and the flaming sword, 378.

— whose is it? 387.

— spirit, and appetite as forming

the soul, 418.

— the supreme power to Philo,

421.

Reason, chief subject of Stoic
thought, 426.

Relationship due to common
humanity, 59.

common language, 61.

— really historical, 62.

— of mere neighbourhood, 62.
Relative pronoun, 78.

Religio, 535.

Religion, philosophy of, v.

— historical documents for studying

the origin of, 27.

— and mythology, common Aryan,

72.

— constituent elements of, 87.

— system of relations between man

and God, 336.

— Disraeli on, 336.

— a bridge between the visible and

invisible, 361.

— and philosophy, 446, 455. f

— object of true, 449.

— must open a return of the soul to

God, 474.

— Physical, Anthropological, and

Psychological, 541.

— the bridge between the Finite

and the Infinite, 538.

— Principal Caird’s definition of,

542.

Religions, comparative study of,
raises our faith in Christianity,
24.

— advantage of this study, 24.
Religious language, 28.

of ancient India, 29.

lesson of, 29.

— thought, borrowing of, 367.
Renan, 464

Resurrection, fate of the soul at
the, according to the Zoroas-

trians, 193-195*

Re-nnion of the Soul with God, 535.

— — two ways of, 535.

— Christian expression for, 535.
Revelation, natural, 7.

traced in the Veda, 8.

or the holy question of the

Parsis, 55.

INDEX.

575

Revelation, internal and external,
485 -

Reverence for God, want of, 534.

R^ville, M., on the religions of
Mexico and Peru, 86.

Rewards and punishments after
death, 195.

Zarathushtra questions Ahui’a-

mazda on, 1 95-1 99.

Rhabanus Maurus, 500 n.

JRibhus, genii of the Seasons, 121 n .

Richard of St. Victor, 488.

Rig-veda, no knowledge of hell, 166.

— nor of annihilation, 166.

Ah'shis, 306.

Rising on the third night, Persian
belief in, 194 n.

. — day, Jewish belief in, 1 94 n.

Rita, Right, same as the Logos of
Heraclitus, 390.

River dividing heaven and hell, 146.

* Road beginning with li^ht, 1 27, 1 2S.

Rome borrowed religious language
from Greece, 368.

Roots, expressive of acts, 153.

— hence Energism, 153.

Rope and snake, 298.

Iioth, 85.

Roth, 166.

— on Brahman, 241.

Russian peasant covering his Eikon,
487.

Ruysbrook, 506.

SAAGA, great medicine man, 224,
225.

Gabala, 120.

Sacred books, their value, 56.

danger of using biblical lan-
guage in translating the, 57.

of ancient religions, no system

in, 87.

— — how classified, 87.

of India, fragmentary charac-
ter of, 33.

— - Books of the East, vi.

— - — imperfect, 27.

•— — author’s edition of, 30.

modern date of, 3c.

Sacred Books of the East, wisdom
of, 143.

native interpreters often

wrong, 143.

Sacrifice, the origin of religion, SS.
Saey, De, Sylvestre, 337.

Sadhyas, 164.

Sady, 346.

Said and Mohammed, poem on, 34S.
/Sakha, meaning of, 34.

Salajya, the city, r2 2.

Samanyioi or Buddhists, 46 n.

— mentioned by Clement of Alex-

andria, 46 n.

Sawsara, course of the world, 277.
Samyagdarsana or complete insight,
293, 302.

/Sank lira, commentary of, 126, 136,
234, 241.

/Sankara, 113, 116 n.

— the best exponent of the Vedanta,

II 3 -

— on the soul after death, 114,

— and Schopenhauer, 281.

— and Natural Religion, 31 1.

— his school, 313.

— a Monist, 314.

— and Ramanuja, their differences,

3 I 4 - 3 I 9 -

— his teaching about Brahman, 315,

317.

— holds the theory of illusion, 31 7.

— points of resemblance with Ra-

manuja, 318.

— his fearless arguments, 3 T9.

— his phenomenal world, 319.
/Sankara’s commentary on the Dia-
logue on Self, 261.

— difficulties, 262, 265-268.

— considers the Atman always the

same, 272.

/Sankara/;^ rya, 99 n., 100, 107, hi.

— commentary by, 99, 101,

— bolds the theory of nescience, 108.

— his view of Brahman, 108.
Sanskrit, lost books in, 33.

— words in Ch : na, 368.

Sarama, the dogs of, 190.

Sarawyu — Erinnys, 73.

576

INDEX.

Sarpedon, 64 n.
jS'arva, 182 n.

Varvara = Kerberos, 7 3 *

Sassanians, 40.

— revive Zoroastrianism, 40.

Sat, being, 94, 96, 335.

Sattya, 279.

Sattyam, Sattya, 278. 279.
Satyabhedavada and Bhedabheda-
vada, 275, 276.

/Saurva, 186.

Schein and Sein, 167 «.

Schelling, xv. .

SchilleiV Die Welti* eschichte 1st das
Weltgericht/ 1.

Schlegel, 365 n.

Schmidt, Carl, 531.

Scholastic theology, 483, 499 -
Schoolmen, the, 505. ....

true spiritual Christianity m their

teaching, 525.

Schopenhauer and Sankara, 281.

— on Eckhart, 51 1.

Science, a, can be studied apart from
its history, 3, 4*

— of Thought, 521.

Scotus Erigena, 297, 514.

translates the works of Diony-
sius the Areopagite, 465, 466,
474 -

Seasons, brothers of the Moon, 12 1 n.

— genii of the, 12 1 n.

Selene, moon, 29.

Self, the, 96, 105, 160, 239, 250, 251,
262, 272, 447.

— the All in All, 93.

not different from Brahman, 106.

— dialogue on, 250-256.

— to be worshipped and served, 253.

— the Highest, the Divine Self,

261, 268, 316, 325.

— means the individual, 266.

— Sankara’s view, 267.

— the Jiving, never die3, 288.

— or Atman, 301.

— asserts its independence, 304.

— is really Brahman, 304, 305.

— the true, 316, 524.

deceit, Jellal eddin on, 357.

Self, the true bridge between the soul
and God, 539.

knowledge of the Brahmans, 93.

Semitic and Aryan religions, coinci-
dences in, 62.

. — and Greek thought, coincidences
between, 63.

Senai, 344.

Seneca, 509.

Senses, the five, 300.

— Philo on the, 419.

Seraphim, 4.75.

Sermo, ratio, et virtus, 460.

Sermons in German, 499 n %

Seth, 376.

Setu, bridge, 169.

Setus or bridges, 167.

Seven sages, 70.

Sextus on Xenophanes, 332,

Shadow gave the first idea of soul,
259 - r

Shaikh, 348. r

Shakik, 341.

Shahpuhar, 40.

— II, 40.

— and Atflrpad, their dealings with

heresy, 40, 41.

Shapigan, treasury of, 38, 39, 40*
Shechinah, 406.

Shepherd, author of the, 441.
Simplicius, prayer of, 13.

— quoted, 333 n, 334 n .
Sinlessness, 532.

Sirens from Shir-chen, 63 n.

Sir6zeh, the, 43.

Sita, bright, from asita, dark. 188 n.
Skambha, name of the Supreme
Being, 247.

< TKia , 415.

Sloka period, 161,

Sumti, 272.

Society Islanders’ heaven, 228-231.
Sokrates and the Indian philosopher,
83, 84.

— and Plato, 391.

— his belief in one God, 392.

— and 1 the thought in all,’ 39 2 »

— ideas of, 392.

Solon in Egypt, 82.

INDEX.

5 77

Soma, 50, 1 1 9, 1x9 n. y 139, 140,
147.

— the moon, 121 n.

Soma-loving Fathers, 191, 192.

Son of God, xi, xii, xii 404.

Tertnllian s definition, 461.

and humanity, oneness and

difference of, 536.

— of man, xii.

Songs of Solomon, 350.

Sons of God, 365, 542.

Sophia or Episteuie, 402 n 406.

344,

Soul, 105, 447.

— return of, to God after death,

92.

— and God, 91, 92, 336.

— early Christian view of, 94.

— Neo-Platonist view of, 94.

— to God, teaching of the Up;mi-

shads on the relation of the,

* 11 3 *

— Yedanta theories on the, 1 13.

— its return to the Lower Brahman,

1 14.

— in the worlds of Brahman, 116.

— questioned by the moon, 120, 12 1.

— in the moon, 146, T47.

— eaten by the Devas, 146, 147.

— return of, to earth as rain, 1 54,

155 *

— clear concept of, in the Upani-

shads, 154.

— passing into grain, &c., 155, 156.

— good attain a good birth, 156.

— bad, become animals, 156.

— dangers of, when it has i alien as

rain, 157.

— unconscious in its descent, 157.

— immortality of the, 158.

— moral government in the fate of

the, 158.

— in the A vesta, immortality of,

190

— path of, in the Yedic Hymns, 1 90.

— fate of, at the general resurrec-

tion, 193.

— and body, strife between, in the

Talmud, 201.

( 4 ) Pp

Soul, arrival of, before Bahman and
Ahuramazda, 203, 278.

— after passing the Amva£ bridge,

203.

— tale of the, 2 10.

— immortality of, asserted by Plato,

2X0, 2X1.

— names for the, 248.

— has many meanings, 249*

— who or what has a, 257.

— first conception of, from shadow,

2 59 ;

— first idea of, arose from dreams,

259.

— true relation of, to Brahman, 265.

— Vedfintist view, 271.

— true nature of the individual, 269.

— individual and supreme, 272.

— not a created thing, 275.

— Henry More’s verses on, 276.

— Plotinus on, 280.

— nature of, and its relation to the

Divine Being, 280.

— and Brahman, identity of, 2S2,

2S3, 284.

— different states of the, 307, 30S.

— personality of, 310.

— the individual, 312.

— in its true essence is God, 323.

— and God in Sufiism, 337, 338,

. 339. 347, 363-

— in Vedantism, 338.

— Jellal eddin on, 357.

— individual and God, 362.

— return from the visible to the

invisible world, 362.

— of the Stoics, 398.

— universal, 399.

— Philo indistinct on its relation to

God, 418.

— its wider meaning to Philo, 418.

— its threefold division, 418.

— its sevenfold division, 419.

— perishable and imperishable parts,

419.

— Old Testament teaching on, 41 8,

420.

— as coming from and returning to
God, 423, 424,

578

INDEX.

Soul, influenced by matter, 427.

— tie beautiful in the, 432.

— of God and eternal, 451,

— every fallen, 452.

— and the One Being, 48 3.

— Eckhar t on, 5 1 5 , 5 1 6.

— something uncreated in, 516.

— Divine element in the, 516.

— birth of the Son in the, 516.

— founded by Eckliart on the Di-

vine Ground, 523.

— in its created form separated

from God, 523.

— its relation to God according to

Eckhart, 524.

— oneness with God, 534.

— and the metaphor of the sun’s

rays, 540.

— after death, journey of the, 113

et seq.

passages from the Upani-

shads, 114 et seq.

— . met by one of the faithful,

1 15 n., 1 16 n.

wanderings of, 143.

three stages in the Upani-

shads, 150.

— first stage, 150.

second stage, 150.

third stage, 151.

Zoroastrian teaching on,

193*

Plato’s views, 208, 209.

silence of Buddha on, 233.

all other religions on, 233.

vSouls, weighing of, 167.

— leaving the moon, 159.

— in the world of the gods, 159.

— before the throne of Brahman,

160.

— of the wicked, fate of, 198.

— revisiting earth among the Hai-

das, 224.

— ethical idea, 225.

— of * those who die on a pillow,’

228, 229 n.

— scintillations of God, 276.^

— receiving bodies according to

their deeds, 301.

Soul’s inseparateness from Brahman,
126.

— journey more simple in the Avesta

than in the Upanishads, 204.
Sparks and fire, 275.

Special revelation needed for a belief
in God, 5.

Species, €180?, 3 86, 388,

— evolution of, 38 7.

— the ideas of Plato, 392.
Speculations on Brahman, later, 27S.
Speculative school, 530.

Speech, universal, 59.

Spenser, odes of, 353.

Spenta Armaiti, 206.

Spentd mainyu, the beneficent spirit,
183, 184.

became a name of Ahura-

mazda, 185.
airepixaTucoL , 398.

< T(paipo€idr]S , 23 7.

Sphere, concept of the perfect, 388?
Spiegel, 46 n. f 48 n.

Spinoza, 102.

Spirit W or Id, names for, among Poly-
nesians, 228.

Spirit, as Word, Reason, and Power,
461.

Spiritism, 153.

Spiritus, Tertullian’s use of, 461.
Spitama Zarathushtra, 205.
Sprenger, 344 n.

Sfraddadhau, credidi, 79.

Nraddha, 204.

£raddhas, 191.

Srosh, 201, 202*

/Sruti, or inspiration, 102, 104, 137,
141, 268, 272.

— is the Veda, 104.

— difficulties created by, 137.

— Brahman as are, 141.

— only removes nescience,' 293.

St, Augustine, 457, 462, 472, 505,

509.

— on God made man, 323, 421,

444, 456.

— a Neo-Platon ist, 429.

— on the speaking of God, 521,

St. Basil, 462.

INDEX.

579

St. Basil, Ms distinction between
KTjpvjfiara and day para, 481.
St. Bernard, 345, 457, 462, 486-488,
494, 505.

— on the Christian life, 4S9,

— his Eestasis, 490.

— his twelve degrees of humility,

49°.

— resembles the Vedantisfcs and

Neo-Plat onists, 491.

— his position in the Church and

State, 492.

— and Abelard, 492.

— his theology and life, 492.

— and the Crusades, 492,

St. Chrysostom, 509.

St. Clement of Alexandria, xii, xiii,
297 . 384. 433 ) 434 ) 434 »•> 4 <> 3 >
5 r 7 -

— complains of plagiarism, 371.

— superior to St. Paul, 435.

■ why he became a Christian, 435.

— his Master, 436.

— Ms faith, in the Old Testament,

436.

— his allegorical interpretation of

the New Testament, 436.

— Trinity of, 436, 437, 442.

— Logos of, 437, 439, 444.

— recognised Jesus as the Logos.

438, 440.

— Holy Ghost of, 440, 442.

— his idea of personality, 442.

— oneness of the human and divine

natures, 443, 444.

— Ms idea of Christ, 444.

— his teaching for babes, 445.

— his higher teaching, 445.

— knowledge or Gnosis, 445.

— resembles the Vedanta teaching

and not Sufiism, 445.

— on gods and angels, 472.

— on the celestial and earthly hier-

archies, 478 n.

— uncanonised, 454, 456, 488.

— on the believer, 456.

St. Cyril, 463.

St. Denis, and Dionysius the Areo-
pagite, 465.

St. Jerome on new words, 460.

St. Paul and Pantheism, 94.

— a philosophical apologete of Chris-

tianity, 435.

St. Theresa, 462.

St. Victors, the two, 525.
Sthhlasarira, the coarse body, 296.
Stoa, 384.

Stobaeus, 390.

Stoical division of the Soul, 419.
Stoics, 372, 37 7, 380, 3S4, 396.

— Beason or Logos of, 397, 398,

399 -

— Hyle, matter, of the, 397.

— God of the, 397.

— true Pantheists, 397.

— the Logoi of, 397, 398.

— external and internal Logos, 398.

— soul living after death, 398.

— universal soul, 398.

— and Neo-Platonists, 424-427.

— and God, 426.
jSftdra caste, 247.

&ftdras, 163.

— can study the Vedanta, 330.

Snfi, son of the season, 160.

— Fakir, Darwish, 344.

— poets, extracts from, 354-361.

— derivation of, 338, 339, 344.

— doctrines, abstract of, 339.

— Babia the earliest, 340.

— terms derived from Christianity,

343 *

— four stages of the, 348.

Sufiism, its origin, 337.

— not genealogically descended from

Vedantism, 337.

— soul and God in, 337.

— Tholuck on, 338.

— Mahommedan in origin, 338.

— treatises on, 348.

— Persian influence on, 342.

— its connection with early Chris-

tianity, 342, 343.

— the founder of, 343.

— poetical language of, 349.

— morality of, 354.

— may almost be called Christian,

359 *

P p 2

580

INDEX.

Sufiisrri, Christianity and the Ve«
danta-philosophy, coincidences
between, 366.

Sufis, the, 338, 539.

— their belief, 339.

— traces of Platonism among the,

342.

— wrote both in Persian and Arabic,

344 -

— their asceticism, 345.

— their saint-like lives, 345.

— Jellal eddin on the true, 346.

— little theosophic philosophy

among, 346.

— mystical theology of, 353.

— appeal to J esus, 360.
S&kshmasarira, the subtle (astral ?)

body, 296.

— Theosophists and, 305.

Summer Solstice, 145.

the ay ana of the Pitris, 145,

146.

among the Parsis, 145.

Sun, Jellal eddin on, 356.

— and its rays, metaphor of the,

539 > 540 .

Snparnas, 163.

Supernatural religion, vii.

Supreme Being, 239, 241, 273, 447,

one, in the Vedas, 50.

Xenophanes on, 50.

in the A vest a, 50.

of both J ews and Greeks

separated from man, 379.

— — or Monogenes, 41 0-41 2.

above Jupiter, 423.

Supreme Soul, 272.

Suras, how the word was formed, 187.

— connected with svar, 188.

Su«o, 506.

— his penances, 531.

Sftfcra, 97.

— style, 97, 127, 130, 132, 133,

IB 4 . 136-

Sfttras, alone almost unintelligible,
127.

— laws of Manu existed first as,

161.

— and their commentaries, 370.

Svargaloka, 159, 171.

S varga- world, 120.

Svavambhft, 248.

/SVetaketu and his father, 285-290.
&yama, 120.

S^nesius, Bishop, 373.

Synod of Antioch, 412.

— of Trier, 503.

GvvTrjprjcn ?, 524.

TAHITIAN heaven, 228.

— faith, 231.

Talmud and Christian doctrines, 9,
10.

— no bridge to another life in the,

174 .

— strife between soul and body, 201.
Tangiia, iron-wood tree for souls,

230.

Tartarus, 217.

Tab tvam asi, 105, 279, 285, 291.
Tauler, 457, 487, 506, 536. *

— his sermons, 506.

— borrowed from Eckhart, 506,

— stillness and silence taught by,

529 - * ,

— discouraged extreme penance,

529 -

— led an active life, 539.

— on confession, 530.

— on visions, 531.

— on sinlessness, 533.

Telang, Mr., 99 n.

Temple, Dr., on the personality of
God, 235.

Tertullian, 434, 460.

— his Latin equivalents for Logos,

460.

— on the Son of God, 461.

— his use of spiritns, 461.

7 ) rov ovtos Gea, 214,

Thales, 80, 85.

That and thou, identity of the, 106.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, 443.
Theodorus, 464.

Theologia Germanicci , 510, 510 n.

Henry More on, 51 1.

Theologos, name for St. John, 453 ru
Theology, 87.

INDEX.

581

Theology, lessons of comparative,

178.

— mystic and scholastic, 482.
Theopompos, 45,

Theos, 447.

6e6$ and 6 0e6s, 456, 459.

481, 4S2, 482 n.

Theosophic, 91.

— philosophy of the Vedantist, not

of the Sufis, 346.

Theosophy, 91, 92, 106, 541.

— true meaning of, xvi.

— in Christianity, 446.

— highest lesson of, 539.
Therapeutai, the, 464.

Thibaut, 99, 100, 275 n.

— on Ram&nu^a, 313.

* Thinking and willing,’ 3S3.

Third or evil road, 130.

— Person of the Trinity, 441.

^ probably a Jewish idea, 441.

Origen’s view, 452.

Tholuck, 463, 467.

— on Sufiism, 3 3 8.

— on mysticism, 484.

Thomas Aquinas, v, 297, 462, 466,
474 , 494 * 499 > 5 ° 9 > 512, 514,

525*

— — * follows and depends on

Dionysius, 484, 495.

on faith and knowledge, 494.

not a true mystic, 494.

likeness to, not oneness with

God, 495.

free from theological pre-
judice, 496.

knowledge of God, 496.

intellectual vision, 497.

on creation, 514.

Thoms, 174 n*

* Thou art that,’ 268, 284.

Thought of God, 412.

Thoughts and words, unbroken chain
of, 522.

Three qualities, the, 162.

— Fates, Er before the, 219.

Thrones, 475.

Tilak, B. G., the antiquity of the
Vedas, 145.

Tin-tir, lord of, 14.

Todas, bridge to another life among
the, 173.

— heaven and hell, 174,
to %v teal to 6V, 237.

6V, 78, 26S, 278, 331, 334, 410,
N 447 ? 4 ^ 8 .

TO QVTOOS 6V, 379.

Translation from Vedanta-sfttras,
127 et seq.

Transmigration in the Laws of
Manu, 1 61.

— nine classes of, 163.

— no trace of, in Eastern Pacific,

231.

Trier, Synod of, 503.

Trimftrti, 241, 243.

Trinity of St. Clement, 436.

— of Plato, 440.

— of N umenius, 440.

— of Origen, 452.

Tropics of Porphyrius, 144.

— as gates for the soul, 145.

True, the (Satyam), 213.

— coming back to the, 288.

Truth, not served by assertions, 7.

— universality of, 51.

— underlying myth, 222.

— touchstone of, 375.

Tundalas, poem of, 170.

Two gates, or two mouths, 144.

primeval principles, 184.

present even in Ahuramazda,

184, 185.

Tylor, 75.

Types, whence they arise? 387,

389.

— Huxley’s idea of, 387, 388.

UNCERTAINTIES in most an-
_ cient texts, 111.

Unicus, not unigenitus, 411.

Union, not absorption, 290.

Union with God, Dionysius on* 478
479, 480.

— mystic, 479.

— — five stages of, 480*

Universal Self, 160.

— Soul, 310.

582

INDEX.

Unknowable, tlie, of Agnostics,
105.

Unknown, Absolute Being, 236,
237 -

Unmindfulness, river of, 220, 221.
Unseen in man, dialogue on the,
155 -

Upadhis, 271, 293, 296, 303, 305.

— what they are, 305.

— caused by nescience, 305.
Upanishad doctrine, an early and

late growth of, 1 1 3.
Upanishads, 77, 79, 80, 94, 95, 101,
104, 105, 107, 108, 224, 234,
240, 370, 539.

— are fragments, 96.

— different accounts of the be-

ginning in the, 96.

— revealed, 9 7.

— difficult to translate, 109.

— texts very obscure, no.

— author’s translation of, no.

— on the relation of the soul to

God, 1 13.

different statements on this in

the, 1 13.

— on the soul after death, 114 et

seq. *

— historical progress in the,

125.

— attempt to harmonise the differ-

ent statements in the, 127.

— not in harmony with the M antras,

137 -

— no attempt to harmonise them

with the teaching of the Vedas,

141.

— three stages of thought as to the

soul, 150.

— mythological language inter-

preted, 142.

— on the return of souls to earth,

154.

— belief in invisible things in the,

154 -

* — knowledge or faith better than

good works in, 190.

— a later development than the

Vedic Hymns, 193.

Upanishads, struggle for a higher
idea of the Godhead, 238.

— the Supreme Being in, 239.

— some passages early in, 291.

— evolution in, 297.

— equivocal passages in, 312.

— strange to us, 322, 323.

— germs of Buddhism in, 325.

— their doctrine called Bahasya,

secret, 329.

— study of, restricted, 329.

— the psychological problem always

uppermost, 335.

— study of, a help to reading Eck-

hart, 5 1 1.

Upis in Artemis Upis, 64 n.

Urd, well of, 169.

Utkranti, exodus of the soul, 309.
Uttara Mimamsa, 98, 99.

VAGASANEYAKA, 132.
Va^asaneyins, 132.

Vahr&m, 201.

V&i, 201.

Yaimanika deities, 163.
Vaisya-caste, 247.

Vaisyas, 156.

Yaitarawi, the river, 170,

Va 7 c, 79.

Valentinians, the, 396.

Valkhas, or Yologesis I, 39.

— preserved the Avesta and Zend,

39 -

Varstmansar Nash, 56.

Varurca, 16, 17, 121, 130, 133, 181.

— not Ouranos, 73.

— above the lightning, 132, 135,

136.

— Ahuramazda, a development of,

183.

Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics ,
498 n.

Vayu, air, wind, 121, 130, 131, 132,
I 35 ? 2 47 -

Veda, poets of, and Zoroaster left no
written works, 31.

— from vid, 35.

— and Ved&nta, 95.

— of da, 79.

INDEX,

583

Veda, important for Physical and
Psychological Religion, 95.

— superhuman, 103.

— knowledge, or language, 103.

— is $ruti, 104.

— a hook with seven seals, 112.

— historical growth of, 142.

— struggle for higher idea of the

Godhead in, 237.

— the Supreme Being in, 239, 240.

— study of, restricted, 330.

— and Avesta, close connection of

languages of, 180.

names shared in common, 182.

— common background of, 203.
Vedanta, 95, 290, 539.

— literature, three periods of, 101.

* — schools, two, 107, 1 13, 1 14.

— theories on the soul, 113, 126,

362,363.

*5— founded on &ruti, 14T.

— doctrine on Immortality, 234.

— as a philosophical system, 282.

— still a religion, 324.

— moral character of, 325.

— safeguards against licence, 326.

— soul and God in, 336.

— imparts highest knowledge, 293.

— philosophy, 66, 77, 102, 104,

103, 107, 108.

on the Self, 106,

fundamental principle of, 284.

292.

differs from mystic philosophy,

284.

creation in the, 296.

rich in similes, 324.

no restriction on the study of,

329.

Sufiism and Christianity, coin-
cidences between, 366, 459.

— its growth, 369, 370.
Vedanta-sfLtras, ,97, 98, 101, 107,

108, 234, 290, 312.

number of, 98.

names of, 98.

translations of, 114 n. f 12 6 .

tran slation of first S&tra of third

Chap, of fourth Book, 12 jet seq.

Vedanta-shtras, love of God want-
ing in, 291.

short summary of, 317.

Vedantism, is it the origin of Sufi-
ism? 337.

— likeness to mystic Christianity,

526.

Vedantist, a, on identity after death,
258.

— on the Dialogue with Prapapati ,

261.

— on the individual soul, 271,

— admits no difference between

cause and effect, 303.
Vedantists, Eleatic philosophers and
German Mystics, 280.

— personal God of the, 320.

— two kinds of reality to the, 320.

— Creator of the, 320.

— attain the same end as Kant, 321.

— on union with Brahman in this

life, 533.

Vedic prayers, 16, 17.

— Hymns, path of the soul in, 190.
invocation of the Fathers in,

191.

— poets and philosophers advanced

beyond their old faith common
with the Zoroastrians, 189.

— Sanskrit difficult, 1 79.

— deities, some occur as demons in

the Avesta, 189.

Vendidad and Mini, 41,

— or Vindad, 42, 43.

— Sadah, 43.

— age of, 46.

— bridge of JTinvatf in the, 172.

— God and the Devil in the, 185.
Verbal copula, 77.

Verbum, vndh, word, 242.

V ergottung and V ergott erung, 482%.
Vesta, 36.

Vibhu, hall of Brahman, 1 21, 122.
Vid, to know, 35.

Vipara river, 121, 122, 124.

— means ageless, 142, 170, 2 2 1.
Vi&akshawa, throne, 121, 123, 124*

— the feet and sides of, 123.
Viro&ana, 250, 251, 253, 260.

584

INDEX.

Virtues, 475.

Yishran, 140.

Visions of ascetics, 528, 531.
Vispered, the, 43.

— age of the, 46.

Vistasp, sacred books of Zoroaster
collected under, 38.
Visvakarman, 247.

Vivarta, 298.

Vivarta-vada, 317.

Vizaresha, the fiend, 172, 194.
Vohilinand, good thought, 44, 49,
56, 186, 203.

— a parallel to the Holy Ghost, 57*
Vorstellung, 385.

VWdh, 242.

Vntrahan, Veda « Verethraghna,
A vesta, 182.

Vyasa-shtras, 98.

WACKEBNAGEL and Weinhold,
504 n,

Waitz, 75.

Waldensians, 503.

Wassiljew, 32 n.

Water the beginning of all things,
80, 85*

Waxing and waning of the moon,
147, 148.

Weber, 99 n., 166, 167 n.

Weighing of souls, 167.

— of the dead in the Minokhired,

201.

— by Eashnft, 202.

Weisse, xv.

Wellhausen, 53.

Weltgeschichte, ist das Weltgericht,

West, Dr., 42, 47, 55 n.

— his translation of the Dlnkard,

47, 56.

Westcott, 204, 2io 212 n>

— on the Logos of the Fourth

Gospel, 414.

— story of Dionysius the Areopa-

gite, 463.

— on the fifth century, 478.
West-Ostlicher Divan, 337.

< What thou art, that am I,’ 160.

Whinfield on translations of Greek
books into Arabic, 342.

— translations from the Mesne vi,

355 -

Wicked, punishments of, in Mann,
165.

— cannot find the path of the Fathers

or Gods, 1 71.

— burnt by flames, 171, 172.

— fate of, after death, 198, 199.
Widow-burning, appeal to lost books,

33 - ,

Wife of God, 402.

Wilford, 81.

Will, surrender of our, 542.
Wisdom, the Semitic not the same
as the Logos, xi.

— of God, 402, 406.

— personification of, 405.

— or Sophia, 406.

— of the Proverbs, 406. ^

— as the Father, 407.

Word, 242.

— as Brahman, 242, 243.

— or Logos, 302, 381.

— not mere sound but thought, 381,

3 S 5 -

— and thought inseparable, 384.

— of God, 404, 405, 412.

— of the Father, 513.

— has lost its meaning, 521.

Words and thoughts, common Aryan

stock of, 72.

Works, blessedness acquired by, 148.
return to earth, 148.

— are exhausted, 1 50.

World of Agni, Vayu, &c., 121, 133.

— connected with loka, 133, 135.

— as word and thought, 242.

— is Brahman, 299.

— the intelligible as the Logos,

407.

— and all in it, the true Son,

4 * 7 - , •

— = places of enjoyment, 133.

spirit of Plato, 440.

wide truths, 10, 11.

Writing, no word for, in Veda or
Avesta, 31.

INDEX,

585

Writing known in some books of the
Old Testament, 32.

XENOPHANES on one God, 59.

— on the Supreme Being, 235,

237-

— Plato and Cicero on, 331.

— likeness of liis teaching to the

Upanishads, 330, 331, 332, 333.

— Sextus on, 332.

— physical philosophy of, 332,

YAMA, 190, 192, 234,

— realm of, 137, 140.

— first of mortals, 1 38.

— the moon, not the sun, 13 8 n,

— near the setting sun, 139.

— tormentor of the wicked, 166.

— path of, 169.

— and Vanma, 190.

— on the fate of the wicked, 217,

218.

— in the world of the Fathers, 227,

228.

Yamaloka, 146,

Yashts, the, 43.

— age of, 46.

Yasna, the, 43.

— the old and later, 46.

Year, from, to the wind, 130.
Yeshfiha, moments, 121, 122.
Yoga-sfttras, 327.

Yogins, 327.

Yogis, the, 353.

ZAOTAR, hotar, 65.

Zarathushtra, 36, 206.

— author of the Gath as, 44.

— secession of, from the YedicDevas,

182,

— his monotheism, 183.

— tried to solve the problem of the

existence of evil, 184.

— questioned by one of the de-

parted, 198. I

Zarathushtra’s account of Ahum
Mazda, 51.

— talk with Ahura Mazda, 54, 55.

— followers abjuring their faith in

the Devas, 188.

a real historic event, 188, 1S9.

Zaramaya, oil of, 198, 221.

Zeller, Die PMlovophie tier
Griechen , Si, 82, 83, 84, 107 n
280 n., 335.

Zend Avesta, erroneous name, 35,36.

— translated into Greek, 39.

— preserved by Vologeses I, 39.

— language, 43.

Zeno, 330.

— on the Logos, 460.

Zeus, 105, 212, 447.

— deus, bright, 29.

— or J upiter, lesson of, 29.

— and Dyaus, 73.

— wrong derivation from 73.

— of Xenophanes, 330, 331I

a personal deity, 331.

Cicero on, 331.

— of Aristotle, 395.

Zimmer, 139 n .

Zoroaster, analysis of his books by
Hermippus, 83.

— teaches neither Fire-worship nor

Dualism, 180.

— and the Yedic Rishis, religions

of, 1 81.

— name known to Plato and Ari-

stotle, 83,

Zoroastrian prayer, 19.

— religion, loss of many hooks, 56.

— idea of a spiritual and material

creation, 56, 57.

— parallel to the Logos, 57.

— Mazdayaznian, 188.

Zoroastrianism revived by the Sas-

sanians, 40.

Zoroastrians in some points more
simple than the Vedic philoso-
phers, 189.

THE END.

CATALOGUE OF PRINCIPAL WORKS

PUBLISHED BY

PROFESSOR F. MAX MULLER,

COMPILED BY M. W.

Hitopadesa. Eine alte indische Fabelsammlung, aus
dem Sanskrit zum ersten Mai ins Deutsche ixber-
setzt. 1844. (Out of print.)

Meghaduta, . der Wolkenbote, dem Kalidasa nachge-
dichtet. 1847. (Out of print.)

On the Relation of the Bengali to the Aryan and
Aboriginal Languages of India. 1847. (Trans-
actions of the British Association for 1847.)

Rig-Veda-Samhita. The Sacred Hymns of the Brah-
mans, together with the Commentary of Say auA-
^arya, edited by F. M. M. 6 vols. 4to. 1 849-1 873.

On the Turanian Languages. Letter to Chevalier
Bunsen. 1853. (Out of print.) (In Bunsen’s
Christianity and Mankind, vol. Ill, pp. 363 seq.)

On Indian Logic (in Thomson’s 4 Laws of Thought ’).

1853-

Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet. 1 854.

Suggestions for the Assistance of Officers in Learning
the Languages of the Seat of War in the East.
1854.

The Languages of the Seat of War in the East ; with
a Survey of the three Families of Language,
Semitic, Aryan, and Turanian. Second Edition.
With an Appendix on the Missionary Alphabet
and an Ethnological Map by A. Petermann.
i 855. (Out of print.)

Comparative Mythology. 1856. (Reprinted in ‘ Chips
from a German Workshop/)

Deutsche Liebe. Aus den Papieren eines Fremdlings.
1857. Ninth Edition, 1889.

Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims. 1857. (Reprinted
in c Chips from a German Workshop/)

The German Classics from the Fourth to the Nine- ^
teenth Century. 1858. New Edition, by F.
Lichtenstein. 2 vols. Oxford, 1886.

Correspondence relating to the Establishment of an
Oriental College in London. (Reprinted from
The Times , 1858.)

A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature. 1859.
Second Edition, i860. (Out of print.)

Ancient Hindu Astronomy and Chronology. 18 62,
(From fourth volume of the Rig-Veda.)

Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the
Royal Institution of Great Britain. Vol. I, 1861.
Vol. II, 1867. Fourteenth Edition, 1886.

Ilitopadesa. Sanskrit Text with Interlinear Trans-
literation, Grammatical Analysis, and English
Translation. 1866.

A Sanskrit Grammar for Beginners. 1866. Second
Edition, 1870. New and abridged Edition, by
A. A. Macdonell. 1886.

Chips from a German Workshop. 4 vols. 1867-
1875. Second Edition. Vols. I, H. 1868.
(Out of print. A selection published under the
title of ‘Selected Essays.’)

Volume I.

Lecture on the Vedas, or the Sacred Books of the Brah-
mans, delivered at Leeds, 1865.

Christ and other Masters, 1858.

The Veda and Zend-Avesta, 1853.

The Aitareya-Brahmana, 1864.

On the Study of the Zend-Avesta in India, 1862.

Progress of Zend Scholarship, 1865.

Genesis and the Zend-Avesta, 1864.

The Modern Parsis, 1862.

Buddhism, 1862.

Buddhist Pilgrims, 1857.

The Meaning of Nirv&wa, 1857.

Chinese Translations of Sanskrit Texts, 1861.

The Works of Confucius, 1861,

Popol Vuh, 1862.

Semitic Monotheism, i860.

Volume II.

Comparative Mythology, 1856.

Greek Mythology, 1858.

Greek Legends, 1867.

Bellerophon, 1855.

The Norsemen in Iceland, 1858.

Folk-Lore, 1863.

Zulu Nursery Tales, 1867,

Popular Tales from the Norse, 1859.

Tales of the West Highlands, 1861.

On Manners and Customs, 1865.

Our Figures, 1863.

Caste, 1858.

Volume ILL

German Literature, 1858.

Old German Love-Songs, 1858.

Ye Schyppe of Fooles, 1858.

Life of Schiller, 1859.

Wilhelm Muller, 1858.

On the Language and Poetry of Schleswig-Holstein, 1864.

Joinville, 1866.

The Journal des Savants and the Journal de Trevoux, 1866.

Chasot, 1856.

Shakespeare, 1864.

Bacon in Germany, 1857.

A German Traveller in England a.d. 1598, 1857.

Cornish Antiquities, 1867.

Are there Jews in Cornwall ? 1867.

The Insulation of St. Michael's Mount, 1867.

Bunsen, 1868.

Letters from Bunsen to Max Muller in the years 1848 to
1859 -

Volume IV.

Inaugural Lecture, On the Value of Comparative Philology
as a branch of Academic Study, delivered before the
University of Oxford, 1868.

Note A. On the Final Dental of the Pronominal Stem tad.

Note B. Did Feminine Bases in a take s in the Nomina-
tive Singular ?

Note C. Grammatical Forms in Sanskrit corresponding to
so-called Infinitives in Greek and Latin.

Rede Lecture, Part I. On the Stratification of Language,
delivered before the University of Cambridge, 1868.

Rede Lecture, Part II. On Curtius’ Chronology of the
Indo-Germanic Languages, 1875.

Lecture on the Migration of Fables, delivered at the Royal
Institution, June 3, 1870 {Contemporary Review, July, 1870).

Appendix. On Professor Benfey’s Discovery of a Syriac
Translation of the Indian Fables.

Notes.

Lecture on the Results of the Science of Language, de-
livered before the University of Strassburg, May 23,
1872 ( Contemporary Review , June, 1872).

Note B. The Vocative of Dyaus and Zevs.

Note C. Aryan Words occurring in Zend but not in San-
skrit.

Lecture on Missions, delivered in Westminster Abbey,
December 3, 1873.

Note A. Passages shewing the Missionary Spirit of
Buddhism.

Note B. The Schism in the Brahma-Samaj.

Note 0. Extracts from Keshub Chunder Sen's Lectures.

Dr. Stanley’s Introductory Sermon on Christian Missions.

On the Vitality of Brahmanism, postscript to the Lecture
on Missions ( Fortnightly Review, July, 1874).

Address on the Importance of Oriental Studies, delivered
at the International Congress of Orientalists in London,
1874.

Notes.

Life of Colebrooke, with Extracts from his Manuscript
Notes on Comparative Philology (Edinburgh Review ,
October, 1872).

Beply to Mr. Darwin (< Contemporary Review , January, 1875).

In Self-Defence.

Index to Vols. III. and IV.

On the Stratification of Language. Sir Robert Rede’s
Lecture, delivered at Cambridge. 1868.

Rig-Veda-Samhita. The Sacred Hymns of the Brah-
mans. Translated and explained by F, M. M.
Vol. I: Hymns to the Maruts. 1869,

Rig-Veda-Pratis&khya; Das alteste Lehrbuch der
Yedischen Phonetik. Sanskrit Text mit Ueber-
setzung und Anmerkungen. Leipzig, 1869.

Buddhaghosha’s Parables translated from Burmese by
Captain T. Rogers, with an Introduction con-
taining Buddha’s Dhammapada, translated from
P&li by F. M. M. 1870,

Letters on the War between Germany and France, by
T. Mommsen, D. F. Strauss, F. Max Muller, and
T. Carlyle. 1871.

Speech at the German Peace Festival in London,
May, 1871. Leipzig, 1871.

Ueber die Resultate der Sprachwissenseliaft. Vorle-
sung. Strassburg, 1872.

On Missions: a Lecture delivered in Westminster
Abbey, with an Introductory Sermon by A. P.
Stanley. London, 1873. (Out of print.)

The Hymns of the Rig- Veda in the Samhita and Pacla
Texts. (Reprinted from the Eclitio Princeps.)
2 vols. 1873.

Lectures on Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of Language,
delivered at the Royal Institution in March and
April, 1873. (Out of print.)

Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures
delivered at the Royal Institution. 1873. New
Edition, 1880.

Basedow, J. B. (M.M/s great grandfather), a Biography,
in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic, 1875.

Schiller’s Briefwechsel mit Herzog Christian von
Schleswig-Holstein. 1 875.

Ueber Ablative auf d mit Locativbedeutung (Jahr-
biicher fur Philologie. 1876, Heft xo, ‘Selected
Essays 5 ).

On Spelling. London and Bath, 1876, 1886.

Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as
illustrated by the Religions of India. Hibbert
Lectures, 1878. Last Edition, 189 1*

The Upanishads, translated. (Sacred Books of the
East, VoL I, 1879 ; Vol. XV, 1884.)

Selected Essays on Language, Mythology, and Re-
ligion. 2 vols. 1881.

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in Com-
memoration of the Centenary of its First Pub-
lication. Translated by M. M., with Introduction
by L. Noird. 1881.

The Dhammapada, translated from PMi. 1881. (Vol.
X, Part 1 of Sacred Books of the East.)

Buddhist Texts from Japan, edited in the Aryan Series
of the Anecdota Oxoniensia, I, 1. 1881.

Sacred Books of the East. Letter to the Very Rev.
the Dean of Christ Church. Oxford, 1883.

SukMvativyuha, Description of Sukhavati, The Land
of Bliss, edited by F. M. M. and Bunyiu Nanjio.
(Anecdota Oxoniensia, Vol. I, Part 11. 1883.)

India, What can it Teach us ? A Course of Lectures
delivered before the University of Cambridge.
1883. New Edition, 1892.

Biographical Essays. London, 1884.

Rajah Rammohun Roy, 1774-1883 (written 1883).

Keshub Chunder Sen, 1838-1884 (written 1884).

Dayananda Surasvati, 1837-1883 (written 1884).

Bunyiu Nanjio, 1849, and Kenjiu Kasawara, 1851-1883
(written 1884).

Colebrooke, 1765-1837 (Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1873; ‘Chips
from a German Workshop/ iv, 377).

Mohl, 1800-187 6 ( Contemporary Review, Aug. 1878).

Bunsen, 1791-1860 (‘Chips from a German Workshop/
iii, 358).

Kingsley, 1820-1875 (Translated from Deutsche Rundschau,

1877)-

Q q

( 4 )

The Ancient Palm-Leaves, containing the Pragula-
Paramit& - H?^daya - S »ltra and the Ush^isha-
Vi^aya-Dharawi, edited by F. M. M. and Bunyiu
Nanjio, with an Appendix by G. Buhler. (Anec-
dota Oxoniensia. Aryan Series. Yol. I, Part ill.
1884.)

The Dharma-Samgraha. An Ancient Collection of
Buddhist Technical Terms. Prepared for publi-
cation by Kenjiu Kasawara, and after his death
edited by F. M. M. and H. Wenzel. (Anecdota
Oxoniensia. Aryan Series. Vol. I, Party. 1885.)

Introduction to Book III of 4 The Hundred Greatest
Men. 5 By F. M. M. and E. Renan. 1885. $

Muller, Wilhelm (M. M.’s father), a Biography, in
Allgemeine Deutsche Bio graphic, 1885.

Scherers History of German Literature. Translated
by Mrs. Conybeare. Edited by F. M. M. 1885.
New Edition, 1891.

Hymn to the Storm-Gods. Rig- Veda I, 168, in the

4 Etudes arch^ologiques dddides ’ a Mr. le dr. C.
Leemans. Leide, 1885.

Goethe and Carlyle. An Inaugural Address at the
English Goethe Society. 1886.

The Science of Thought. 1887.

La Carit& of Andrea del Sarto in the Chiostro dello
Scalzo at Florence. With three Illustrations. 1887.

Biographies of Words, and the Home of the Ary as.
1888.

Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought,
delivered at the Royal Institution. 1888.

Inaugural Address at the opening of the School for
Modern Oriental Languages, established by the
Imperial Institute, 1890.

Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of
Glasgow, 1888-1892.

1. Natural Religion. 1889. New Edition, 1892.

2. Physical Religion. 1891.

3. Anthropological Religion. 1892.

4. Psychological Religion. (In the Press.)
Deutsche Liebe. Aus den Papieren eines Fremdlings.

With Notes for the use of Schools. 1888.

Rig-V eda-Samhita. The Sacred Hymns of the Brah-
mans, together with Saya'fta’s Commentary.
New Edition, critically revised. Four vols.
1890-1892.

Three Lectures on the Science of Language. 1889.
New Edition, with a Supplement, c My Prede-
cessors. 5 1891.

The Science of Language : founded on Lectures de-
livered at the Royal Institution in 1861 and
1863. 2 vols. 1891.

Address to the Anthropological Section of the British
Association, Cardiff, 1891.

Vedic Hymns, translated. Part I: Hymns to the
Maruts, Rudra, Vayu, and Vata. (Sacred Books
of the East, Yol. XXXII.) 1891.

Apastamba - Y agoia-Paribhasha - Sutras. Translated.

(Part of Vol. XXX of Sacred Books of the East.)
Three Lectures on the Ved&nta -Philosophy delivered
at the Royal Institution, 1894.

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